


show me where my armor ends

by FlyingSaucer



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: (proceed with caution), M/M, engineer Mike, former Jaeger pilot Harvey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-16 20:40:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13644048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingSaucer/pseuds/FlyingSaucer
Summary: Pacific RimAU.





	1. Chapter 1

KAIJU (怪獣, kaijū, Japanese) Giant Beast.

JAEGER (yā-gər, German) Hunter.

 

Being a Jaeger prodigy isn’t a bad gig. It used to be better -- until recently, when the world universally celebrated Jaegers like it did nukes in World War II, it was great. Still, even with the messed-up politics around the program these days, Mike can’t complain. He’s got a place in the city, a modest bank balance, and he’s making enough to keep Grammy in the best possible care all at the same time.

On the other hand, he’s also putting a lot of effort into resolutely ignoring the reports of people calling for the program’s decommissioning. Yes, alright, fine, the success rate’s falling and pilots are dying. People are tired of mourning their heroes, Mike gets that. He’s experimenting with AI himself -- unsuccessfully, so far, but he’s not giving up -- in the hopes of getting automated mechs out there. But short of that, Jaegers are humanity’s best hope against the menace, and anyone who believes otherwise is honestly an idiot.

 

So’s Mike, but for different reasons. Namely, forgetting to switch the ‘PM’ to ‘AM’ when setting his alarm and waking an hour later than he meant to. He jerks awake when the sun shines in his eyes, checks his phone, and groans even as adrenaline kicks through him and he lunges out of bed.

He has just enough time to brush his teeth and wash his face, to brew a cup of coffee and grab what he needs. He puts a hastily-toasted bagel in his mouth, hands full with coffee in one and blueprints in the other, and books it for the hangar.

Fifteen minutes later, he’s pulling into the deserted parking lot of a massive and sprawling building by the bay. Despite his late start, it’s still actually early, and he’s the only one there. Or, he thought he was. When he walks in through the street entrance, his eyes on the GPS tracker for the op on his phone (it’s still seven minutes out), he hears someone remark, “About time.”

Mike looks up to find a man in a fancy suit lounging in one of the chairs by the huge drafting table.

 _Harvey Specter,_ Mike’s memory supplies. A decade and a half since his last mission as a pilot, with the lines to show for it, but recognizable as the guy from the pictures nonetheless. Still just as attractive, too.

“Hi,” Mike says, without missing a beat. He walks up next to him and dumps all his stuff on the drafting table. “Can you hang on a sec? There’s a Jaeger coming in,” he adds, walking away.

He doesn’t know what Specter’s doing here -- the guy’s a hotshot attorney these days and stays away from anything to do with the Jaeger program, as far as Mike’s read, anyway -- but he’ll deal with that later. Jaeger docking first.

He’s heading toward the far wall where the control board is, and is somewhat surprised when he realizes Specter’s out of the chair and following him.

“Uh, you might want to hang back if you don’t want to look all windblown,” Mike says, picking up a marshalling wand and gesturing at his suit with it.

Specter just slides his hands into his pockets. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage,” he drawls.

“Huh. _Suit_ yourself, then,” Mike says, quirking an eyebrow, and Specter huffs a laugh as Mike pulls down a lever and pushes a button in the control board. The giant metal drawbridge next to them lowers, light flooding in. The roof above retracts into itself, the _shink-shink-shink_ of metal plates still muffled by the sound of helicopter blades. There’s a fleet of choppers over the water about a minute away, carrying a titan-sized, beat-up mecha slung between them.

The hangar’s dock is built almost exactly at sea level. It’s not high tide, but a blast of cool wind carrying drops of water still whips at them as the choppers bring the Jaeger in.

Switching on the marshalling wand, Mike picks up a remote and starts moving, gesturing at them to keep going as they approach the threshold, the wind tugging at his hair and the noise from the blades growing deafening.

The choppers are tracking him now. Squinting against the sun, he walks backward farther and farther into the hangar (vaguely aware of Harvey Specter standing by the control box just out of their path) until he hits the docking bay.

This is his favorite part. He might not have a viable automated Jaeger yet, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have fun using AI in other things. He presses a button on the remote, and the floor and wall next to him come to life, ID’ing the Jaeger and responding. Rolling clasps slide under the Jaeger’s feet and link to its grooves. The scaffolding rigs detach from the walls and fold around the giant machine.

The clasps lock into place, the scaffolding interlocks from top to bottom, and voilà. Jaeger docked in a few minutes, no sweat or labor necessary.

Mike runs up two landings in the scaffolding stairs to check a lock, then flicks the switch on the marshalling wand from red to green and does a two-finger salute in the general direction of the choppers. The pilots smile and nod back, easing away.

Mike turns around, hand on the railing, to glance at Specter. The man’s hair is barely ruffled. Must be the gel. He catches Mike’s questioning gaze and nods up at him -- he’s not here to talk to the choppers’ pilots, then.

They maneuver away, and Mike descends the steps and crosses the hangar again, reversing the lever for the roof but leaving the door down. The sun is out and the breeze is nice, the sound of the water lapping at the building’s base more audible as the choppers grow distant.

“You do this every day?” Specter asks. Mike turns to him. His eyes are fixed on the Jaeger. There’s a distant look in them up close, and Mike smiles to himself. Not completely unruffled, after all.

“Every week, just about,” he says easily. “Want to come with while I inspect it?”

“Yeah,” Specter says slowly, looking thoughtful.

“Then follow me,” Mike says, with a tilt of his head. “So. What brings you here, Mr. Specter?” he adds, as they stop to pick up his tools and start to climb the stairs in the scaffolding again, their footsteps echoing against the grid metal.

“Due diligence,” Specter replies, a few steps behind. He doesn’t ask how Mike knows his name, but then, Mike didn’t ask how he got in here, and probably for the same reason, he figures: they both know Marshal Stacker Pentecost.

“You’re the Corps’ new counsel?” Mike asks, setting down his workbox as they stop on the twelfth landing, next to the right knee. The sunlight winks off the water, and Specter stands with his back to it, leaning against the railing while Mike crouches to examine the metal joint.

“Not quite. I’m with Pearson Hardman,” Specter says. He doesn’t sound even slightly winded from the climb, and Mike’s impressed. He isn’t either, but he does this every day.

“As in Jessica Pearson, Pentecost’s personal lawyer,” Mike surmises, keying a code into a console in the supports.

“The very one,” Specter replies, as the supports next to them move, locking around the mecha’s thighs, twisting and lifting, so Mike can get to the wiring. “This is impressive,” he adds.

“I know,” Mike says, pleased, and catches Specter’s amused look. “What lawsuit is Pentecost caught up in now?”

“None. He’s testifying before Congress.”

“Wh -- shit!” Mike hisses, because his hand had loosened at that and the pliers he’d pulled out to work on the wiring had slipped out of it and into the space between the scaffolding and the mecha. He lets them fall, ricocheting against the metal as they go down, and stands up to face Specter. “What do you mean, testifying before Congress?”

Specter’s mouth quirks up on one side. “Well, you see, the legislature of the United States has these two chambers, and when big decisions have to be made…”

“Ha-ha,” Mike says impatiently. “Why’re they calling him in?”

“Have you been keeping up with the news?” Specter asks, more serious now.

“Yes,” says Mike, stepping forward, crossing his arms. “And the DC Circuit ruled the program can’t be scrapped without a referendum. They wouldn’t call Pentecost in for a Congressional hearing if they were discussing anything less than that, so…” (He might ignore the hysterical reports, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t razor-keen on all policy developments re: the program.)

Specter’s eyes glint. “So it’s still in the Supreme Court’s docket, and the DC ruling could be overturned. And they _can_ call in the Marshal to discuss other matters.”

Mike gives him a dry look. “So they’re what, going to have a public hearing on the program’s budget?” It would’ve been plausible fifteen years ago; these days, not so much.

“No,” Specter concedes. “Here’s what’s going on: Pentecost’s fighting to keep the program alive.”

“Alive,” Mike repeats, in disbelief.

The hangar’s empty, but Specter still checks over his shoulder before he continues, although even if someone were there, it’s not likely they would hear him over the sound of the sea. “What gets reported and what happens in closed-door meetings are two very different things. Let’s just say the program’s in more danger than you think, and the Marshal’s enlisted my Managing Partner’s help.”

Mike nods slowly, blood running unpleasantly cold but at the same time not that surprised. He leans against the railing himself. “And that’s where you come in?”

Specter smiles, and Mike wonders if he’s imagining the slight, artificial pull there -- he doesn’t know the guy, after all. “Me? I’m just handling the paperwork and research. I’ll need data, technical expertise. That’s where _you_ come in.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Mike says. “Do you need anything right now?”

Specter smiles again, more sincere now. Or it looks more sincere, but then again, Mike reminds himself, he doesn’t actually know anything about this guy. He’s got a really pretty smile, though. “No, nothing right now. I just wanted to see what I was working with. I have your email, you’ll be hearing from me. Keep up the good work.”

With that, he walks away, back down the stairs. After a moment, Mike shrugs off the confusion and goes back to work, with more urgency than before.


	2. Chapter 2

_ The day before _

Jessica’s on the phone when Harvey walks into her office. She waves him onto the couch distractedly, making a series of ‘mmhm’ sounds into the receiver. Harvey remains standing in front of her desk, annoyed because he was in the middle of a pretty important brief, wondering if this is another one of those times she just had her secretary pass on the summons with a signal.

He pulls out his phone, checking his email. He answers two before she finally hangs up with a, “I’ll let you know.”

Harvey looks up, pocketing the phone. “Well?”

“Apparently they’ll never understand walls are bad ideas,” Jessica says, staring at her own phone thoughtfully.

“What?”

“That was Stacker Pentecost,” she tells him, and Harvey feels his expression go blank, the poker face coming down like an automatic garage door, reflex.

“What did he want?” he says, sliding his hands into his pockets, trying to remember he’s 36, well-established and successful, not the deserter in his early 20’s he was when Jessica took him in, the one he still feels like whenever she looks at him the way she is now.

“Resources.”

Harvey raises his eyebrows. “He getting sued?”

Jessica laughs. “Sit down, Harvey,” she says, tilting her head at the couch. “Explaining this is going to take a while.”

It does. By the time she’s done, long after he’s stopped interrupting with disbelieving sounds, Harvey’s got his eyes closed and is pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is insane.”

“He’s spent the last six months activating everything he can get his hands on,” Jessica says calmly.

“And by he, you mean ‘we’,” Harvey surmises.

Jessica doesn’t dispute it.

“Aren’t you always warning me about dangerous games?” Harvey says, putting his hand down and looking at her.

“Haven’t you heard, Harvey?” Jessica counters. “The world’s coming to an end.”

“You are insane,” Harvey tells her.

She spreads her hands expressively. “Desperate times…”

Harvey shakes his head, taking a breath and just letting what she’s told him sink in. With it comes awe of her, more than the usual amount. He snorts. “All those late nights and extra hours...Louis was convinced you were losing your touch.”

“Of course he was,” she says, with a roll of her eyes.

“I knew you were up to something, I just thought it was smaller.”

Jessica smiles at that. “Of course you did,” she allows.

He gets up, pacing a little, then turns to her. “And you’re sure we can pull this off?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’m flattered you’ve chosen me to be frontman on this --”

“Don’t be, we didn’t really have a choice.”

“Thanks,” Harvey says sarcastically. “But I’m guessing I’ll need to do more than just show up at the hearing.”

“Then you’d be right,” she says, pulling out a card bearing an address from a drawer and placing it on her desk, tapping her index finger on it. “The chief program specialist in New York. You’re going to need him so your argument’s up to date.”

“And does he get the inside track?” Harvey asks, picking up the card and reading it.  _ Michael Ross. _

“Not yet,” Jessica replies. “It’s best to keep this quiet for now, but we’ll need him once the transfer’s complete.”

Makes sense. No amount of fighting expertise is going to help if a Jaegar’s badly designed. “So what’s the story I’m giving him?”

“Whatever works. The truth minus the details, if you want. Just get what you need from him, Stacker will handle the rest.”

Harvey looks up, eyebrows raised. “Stacker, huh?”

Jessica ignores him. “Any other questions?”

Harvey shakes his head. “Not right now.” He tucks the card away. “Don’t think I’m letting that slide, though.”

“Get out,” Jessica says, amused. As he reaches her door, however, she says his name again, and he turns back to her. Jessica rests her hands, fingers entwined, on her desk. “You should know, I know how much this is to ask of you.”

Harvey gives her a small smile, rueful, sad. “It was only a matter of time.”

She nods, and Harvey leaves her office, walking down the hallway to his own, telling Donna to reschedule his next meeting on the way in. He needs a minute to get his head in order.

It’s kind of amazing how quickly kaiju have become just another thing the world lives with, like any other natural disaster. Harvey was sixteen when the first one surfaced next to the Golden Gate bridge and casually knocked fighter jets sent by the panicked army out of the sky. The death toll numbered in the tens of thousands.

The thing is, with every attack, death becomes cheaper. Harvey’s used to it now, like everyone else. The old flashbacks and the sweat and the difficulty breathing haven’t happened for over a decade. He’s fine, he’s healed, he’s made peace. He’s ready to go back, and he wasn’t lying when he said he knew it was a matter of time.

It’s just that knowing it in the abstract is a little different from living it in reality. Going back to the life he left behind…

He snaps out of it, eyes refocusing from where they’d been pointlessly staring at the Manhattan skyline outside his window, puts down the baseball he’d been absently tossing, and swivels his chair back to his desk. There’s a lot he has to arm himself with before the actual fighting, he thinks, as he unfolds his laptop.


	3. Chapter 3

To run a Jaeger, two pilots have to connect neurally with it and each other, in what is called the ‘drift’. Connecting with the Jaeger can be painful, but it’s necessary for control -- otherwise, imagine trying to interact with your world if your body were essentially numb. Connecting with each other is essential for coordination, even if it means every memory, good, bad, everything, gets shared.

It’s not an easy process. The two pilots have to be drift-compatible -- in other words, they need to be able to mind-meld with each other in the first place, to anticipate and sync with and play off each other. If they can’t function as a cohesive unit, neither can the machine.

Even if the pilots are drift-compatible, it can still go wrong. Pilots can start ‘chasing the RABIT’ (Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers) -- technicalese for saying they can get caught up in their own memories and fall out of touch with the present. Mike’s trials were even worse because his co-pilot candidates would get caught up in _his_ memories. He’s stuck to just building Jaegers ever since.

When it all goes right, though, the result is awe-inspiring.

Mike wasn’t the one who came up with the idea of the drift -- it was based on DARPA jet neural interface technology from before he was even born -- but he’s obsessed with it. Then again, he’s obsessed with everything to do with Jaegers. There’s just something about designing these increasingly strong -- and under Mike’s hands, they are _increasingly_ strong -- feats of alloy and silicon and wire, not to mention the intricate codes that animate them (a field all on their own). Knowing they’re protecting the populace and the pilots to the best of current human and technological capability.

Pilots might get the fame and glory, but for his (increasingly sparse, thanks to the cuts) money, this is where it’s really at.

“How’s the progress, Mr. Ross?” comes Pentecost’s voice, and Mike looks away from his computer screen.

“Three of five in, sir,” Mike replies, rising to greet the marshal.

Pentecost nods, coming to stand next to Mike’s drafting table, positioned in the spot with the best view of the hangar.

“Are the folks at Pearson Hardman keeping pace?”

“Yes, sir.” Harvey Specter’s been back a couple of times since that first visit, acting much the same as before, hovering and watching like a hawk. Well, a hawk who also demands bi-weekly write-ups. “I think you should tell Ms. Pearson I’m not a lawyer myself though, I’m not sure they know.”

Pentecost gives him an unamused glance sidelong. Mike can get away with talking to him like this, however. He’s not the academy’s brightest for nothing.

The marshal wants to do a detailed inspection, which makes sense because he won’t be in New York again for another few months. He spends most of his time between the Pentagon and the West Coast. Still, even though it’s technically the Pan _Pacific_ Defense Corps, a surprising amount of the business happens here, between the United Nations headquarters and the city being a convenient port, especially for the technology from Europe. Mike lets one of the other staff members trail behind Pentecost to answer questions for the inspection, returning to his programming.

He’s got an entire file of code completed by the time Pentecost returns to survey the whole hangar once more.

“All good?” Mike asks. Pentecost grunts, hands crossed behind his back, the closest he ever gets to a compliment, and Mike acknowledges it with a nod.

He figures that’ll be the end of it, but then the street door opens again and Harvey Specter himself walks in, following behind an elegant woman who’s taller than him. Mike assumes this is the mighty Jessica Pearson.

“Jessica,” Pentecost says, as impassively as the marshal says everything, but there’s a subtle, glad undercurrent there. “What brings you here?”

“Just thought I’d come and see what Harvey keeps talking about,” she says pleasantly. She turns her head to Mike, who’s risen to greet her. “This is the resident genius?”

“Mike Ross, ma’am,” Mike says, extending his hand. She shakes it. The scrutiny in her gaze makes him want to hide under his desk a little, for no reason he can discern.

“It’s a shame, I just finished the inspection. Half an hour earlier and you could have looked at them up close, too,” Pentecost says to Jessica, gesturing at the Jaegers.

“And I still can,” Jessica replies with a smile. “But I’m here to discuss what we should do about the resources siphoned off so far. The research Harvey’s been overseeing is troubling.”

Mike knows this, having contributed quite a bit to that research, while definitely not being compensated extra for the consult. He glances at Specter, about to make a quip about that, and stops when he really looks at the man’s face.

It was weird enough that Specter was hanging back from the conversation, Mike realizes, since so far he’s seemed like a much more front-and-center kind of guy. But the drawn, pale look on his face now…

“Harvey himself can talk more about that,” Jessica says, turning to him, and the look blinks out, replaced by a bland professional smile.

“Mr. Specter,” Pentecost says, nodding at him. “I haven’t seen you since…”

“Since my last mission, yes, I remember,” Specter cuts in, eyes flicking to Mike for a second before he rolls on. “The wall of life’s set for Senate approval tomorrow.”

Pentecost scowls. Mike can’t blame him. The project is one of the stupidest things he’s ever heard: a coastal wall everywhere the Pacific touches the United States, one that apparently large numbers of people unironically believe the kaiju won’t be able to get past. It’s inspired by other nations that have already constructed similar ones, all of which megacorporations have turned profits on thanks to their panicked populations.

“What use is a wall against a hurricane,” Jessica says drily. “Tell him everything else you’ve found, too,” she adds and Specter nods, launching into a bullet-point summary of the research. It’s clinically depressing, how much is being spent on everything but the program.

“Game plan?” Pentecost asks Jessica, once Specter’s report comes to a close.

She smiles. “Do you object terribly to surveying these a second time?” she says, gesturing at the arsenal.

“I suppose not,” Pentecost says, leading her away, their voices fading to a murmur.

“Subtle,” Mike tells Specter.

Specter looks at him and gives a short laugh. “Yes, well,” he says. “We’re not important enough for her to actually manipulate.”

“But important enough to hide the details from?”

“You could say that,” Specter replies, circling the table so he can see Mike’s screen. “Why don’t you show me the projected expenditure estimates I asked you for?”

Mike groans. “Why do you take away everything that’s fun in the world?”

“Calm down, drama queen,” Specter says, amused. “I’m only going to look over them. I won’t make you run more analyses.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say,” Mike says absently, hitting the print command, and Specter snorts.

“So, you haven’t actually seen Pentecost in ten years?” Mike prompts, once the printer begins spitting out paper. Specter walks over to it wordlessly. Mike doesn’t know if he’s really bad at hiding his discomfort, for a lawyer, or if Mike himself is just weirdly keyed into his mannerisms.

“No,” Specter says eventually, which takes Mike by surprise. He was expecting his question to be ignored. Specter turns around, holding up the new printouts with a half-smile, his face bathed in the blue light from the printer’s display. “You ran the wrong facet, genius.”

“Uh, no, I ran a better one, actually,” Mike says cockily, letting the subject change go without contest, bickering with him until he has to acknowledge Mike’s way is better, as it pretty much always is.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't stand Marcus in the show, and I've always thought [Closer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/275820/chapters/437085) had the best imagination of what younger sibling Specter would be like (in her story The New Deal). So in homage to that, Harvey's little brother's name in this story is Charles.

The next day, Mike pulls up the archives on Harvey Specter.

He’d never given it much thought before. In these times, every new attack is like an epoch; the latest pilots and kaiju dominate all discussions, all the studies. Even in the academy, even completely plugged into the program, all he’d formally heard of Specter was from a couple of slides in a ‘history of the program’ presentation, and informally, hearsay about what those early ops had been like.

Mike knows Specter’s last mission was off the Alaskan coast, that his co-pilot was killed, ripped out of their Jaeger by the kaiju they’d been fighting, that despite the inevitably resultant trauma and horror Specter had then single-handedly killed the kaiju and piloted the remains of the Jaeger back to shore.

That’s not a feat that should’ve even been possible. The whole point of the drift is to share the neural load of these massive machines. There’s a reason single-pilot Jaegers as a concept were abandoned two tries into the design process. Just the head of a Jaeger is about four storeys high. It’s too powerful a machine for one human being to handle alone -- both volunteers literally died from the strain.

And yet, Specter somehow managed for a quarter of an hour, without his brain being scrambled or going into a vegetative state.

One would think that kind of thing would have made him an instant legend. But the thing is, pilots, since the first kaiju surfaced, have all been unbelievably heroic. No one else has lost their partner mid-op, true, but they keep returning to fight, even though they know they’re likely to die and frequently do, or they just get reassigned. Specter didn’t. He left, and the program and media narrative relegated him to a footnote.

That’s everything Mike knows on the subject. Cue the archives.

Aside from the information that Specter’s co-pilot who died while still connected to him was his younger brother, which makes Mike wince, there isn’t much. Reports from the local journalists, the standard eyewitness quotes from the man who saw Specter crawl out of the wreckage.

“ _[The Jaeger] had lost an arm and half its chest, but it looked like a person, you know? It fell to its knees and it made this_ sound, _like a groan of pain._ ”

There’s no pictures of Specter in the immediate aftermath, but there are many of the wreckage. Mike stares at the beehive pattern of the metal mesh under the chunks ripped away by the kaiju. Jaeger codename: Gipsy Danger.

Mike remembers that model. He’s used parts from that Jaeger.

“ _Oh gosh, it was awful. He looked so tiny, coming out of that thing. There was steam coming off him, and he was stumbling once he got to his feet, there was blood on his stomach and his shoulder and his face, he kept saying ‘Charles’..._ ”

Mike looks up a different name: Charles Specter. 18. Specter was 21. No mention of parents. After the op, Specter was honorably discharged on his own request, and a year later he was attending Harvard Law School.

That’s the general search. A more fine-tuned trawl, including through the classified military database, only turns up two additional facts: Specter’s the only pilot to drop out of the program in its history, and Charles was its first casualty after those initial flawless ops. He was the first lesson the kaiju were adapting.

Mike thinks about it, about that look on Harvey Specter’s face, about what it must be like, to have lived through what he did. His hands reach for the old code printouts before he’s even finished the thought; he pops off the cap of a highlighter with his teeth as he goes to work.

* * *

“Hey.”

Mike starts at Specter’s voice, even though these unannounced drop-ins are routine now. “Hey,” he says, rising to his feet. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Specter raises an eyebrow as he strolls up to him. “Oh?”

“You’re just in time,” Mike adds, trying to keep the nerves out of his voice. “I have something to show you.”

Specter’s mouth twitches as if he’s holding back a joke (and Mike would roll his eyes at that if he weren’t preoccupied with how he's going to react), but he just says, “Alright. What’re you waiting for?”

Mike nods awkwardly and walks around the table, and then along in front of the arsenal. Specter follows in silence until they pass the second, and then comments, “You’re being unusually quiet. Are we going to see a dead body?”

“That’s... _unusually_ morbid,” Mike says. Also kind of close in a way he hadn’t thought about, so he diverts. “Do you always think like a serial killer?”

“ _A census taker once tried to test me…_ ” Specter replies, and Mike laughs. They end up trading Anthony Hopkins’ movies trivia until the last Jaeger in the line-up comes into view, at which point Specter trails off mid-sentence.

“Gipsy Danger 2.0,” Mike says, once they’ve drawn to a stop in front of her, to fill the silence that has stretched on for over a minute. “I found the scraps were still in inventory and figured she could be upgraded to a Mark V without needing to build a whole new one from scratch, especially since the program’s running out of cash.”

Specter looks like he’s made from stone. Mike could swear he hasn’t moved a muscle -- except his eyes, which are sweeping over every detail.

“I wanted you to be the first person to see her, for obvious reasons, but I want you to know I’ve worked on her vulnerabilities. There’s no way to keep the kaiju out of the conn-pod but I’ve reinforced it so it’ll at least be harder to break into,” Mike continues, aware he’s babbling, but unable to stop. “I’ve also worked on her drift interface so it’ll detect when there’s new trauma in one pilot and save the other from experiencing it -- it’s not much but it’ll at least cut off the neural bridge…”

Specter interrupts him. “Have you ever piloted one?”

“I...what?” Mike asks.

Specter finally looks away from Gipsy, to him. “A Jaeger. Have you ever piloted one?”

“Uh, no. I haven’t.”

“Never?”

“Not outside the simulator. Can’t establish a neural bridge.” Mike points at his temple. “Photographic memory. It’s overwhelming for everyone else.”

Specter nods slowly, turning back to Gipsy.

“Beautiful,” he says genuinely, and Mike feels the tension ease from his shoulders. He runs a hand through his hair, letting out a relieved chuckle.

“Thank god,” he says, and when Specter looks at him questioningly, continues, “Honestly? I was a little worried you’d react badly to seeing her again, Mr. Specter.”

Specter gives him a bemused smile. “Okay, one, call me Harvey, you are way too lippy with me to be calling me Mr. Anything,” he says, and Mike laughs. “Two, I loved being a pilot. What happened…” his mouth twists unpleasantly, “...happened because we overstretched. We didn’t take Pentecost’s orders when he told us to turn back.”

Mike looks at him in surprise. “That’s why you…”

“Yes," Harvey says. “And it _was_ too painful to try and stay. But not something I ever faulted the program for. I loved it. And her,” he adds, nodding at Gipsy.

Mike smiles. “Noted.”

* * *

After that, he drifts in a pleased glow for the rest of the day. A job well done, that’s all it is.

As follow-up, he studies the old tapes with footage from Gipsy back in the day for hours. For research, of course.

There are interviews, too, of a 21-year-old Harvey, post ops, his smile even cockier than it is these days, boyish and confident, prone to grandiose speeches.

“ _There are things you can’t fight -- acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you have to get out of the way. But when you’re in a Jaeger, suddenly you can fight the hurricane. You can win.”_

* * *

Unlike the first time he was here, the hangar’s buzzing with activity, workers disassembling a mecha and loading the parts on the flatbeds parked outside.

“Hydraulics are shot, we need to replace them,” Mike’s saying to one of the other guys as Harvey approaches him. “The city has parts, but they’re making noises about state vs federal regs over releasing them…”

“You should check Section 409 (c),” Harvey calls.

“Already did,” Mike calls back with a grin, not missing a beat. He says something else to the guy, who nods and walks away. “Check this out,” Mike says as Harvey draws level with him, tilting his head in a gesture for Harvey to follow. He does this every time, much like an excited puppy who keeps finding new things to play with.

At his workspace, he hits a command and the computer renders a CGI simulation: Gipsy 2.0 in action.

“Agile,” Harvey remarks.

“ _I feel the need for speed,_ ” Mike mutters dramatically, grinning to himself, and Harvey fights down a smile of his own.

“Are you sure you’re 26?” he says, leaning against the desk.

“Yes,” Mike says loftily. “And you’re one to talk,” he adds, hitting another key, and Harvey’s voice comes over the speakers, a little less deep, the time he quoted _Independence Day_ at length after he and Charles took down Rachnid. Harvey groans, swatting Mike’s hand away from the keyboard and Mike cracks up.

“The hearing’s in three days,” Harvey says over the track. “It’s looking good, but we still don’t have anything on the projected attack timeframes.”

“That’s because it’s all theories, and none very strong,” Mike says, still half-laughing. “I can ask around, but I don’t know what good it’ll do.”

“Try anyway,” Harvey tells him. “And put your time to better use than this,” he says, gesturing at the speakers, setting Mike off again.


	5. Chapter 5

The last thing Mike had been expecting was to run into Benjamin Geiszler at the gym. Mike still trains, and would, even if it weren’t mandatory for everyone involved in the Jaeger program, but the same can’t be said for Benjamin. That, and the fact that Benjamin works at the kaiju research lab at Stanford, on the other side of the continent, where he’d gone straight after graduating from the academy with Mike.

It turns out he’s in the city to deliver a lecture at Columbia, and had tracked Mike down to his gym, because Benjamin’s always been kind of creepy like that. Still, Mike likes him, and is always happy to catch up with him over drinks at the Lower East Side bar Benjamin drags him to.

Although today, it’s less catching up and more listening to Benjamin blow off steam, because he lives so close to the action.

“ _Fucking_ wall of life.”

Mike pats him on the shoulder. They’re on their fifth round, and Benjamin hasn’t stopped bitching about the project since they got here. Well, about that, and about a physicist/mathematician/statistician he works with.

“ _Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of God,_ ” he says in a mock-British accent. “Because kaiju organs are totally covered in numbers, right?”

“I don’t know,” Mike says thoughtfully, just to needle him because it’s fun. Benjamin’s a biologist, thinks kaiju are the most anatomically fascinating creatures to ever walk the earth, and has very little patience for people who don’t think studying their corpses is worthwhile. “He’s probably good at identifying patterns. Nature’s full of those.”

Benjamin splutters, and Mike can’t help laughing. Benjamin glares at him, resting an elbow on the bar table, narrowing his eyes and pointing at Mike’s face. Or rather, a few inches to the left of Mike’s face, and Mike decides Benjamin’s probably had enough to drink and slides his glass away from him.

“That only matters if he’s actually willing to study the creatures. The way I see it is, if you want to stop them, you _have_ to understand them. But no, Mr. _I-can-read-God’s-handwriting_ is convinced he can predict the timeline of attacks just from a formula.”

That makes Mike pause in the middle of lifting his own glass to his lips. “Wait, what?”

Benjamin sighs. “He has this theory that the attacks are very specifically timed and says he’s closing in on the perfect algorithm to predict them. He needs hard proof, of course, and he won’t be able to prove it without more attacks, but his hypothesis is that they’re going to get closer and closer together, until there’s a new one every minute.”

“Shit,” Mike mutters. “Does he have rough estimates?”

“Nope,” Benjamin replies, looking at his hand in confusion, as if just now figuring out there should be a drink there. “And big fat help that’s going to be if we don’t even know the best way to kill them, which is where _understanding them_ comes in.”

That sets off another rant, by the end of which Benjamin’s slurring more than he’s enunciating, and Mike decides they’re probably done for the night. He pours Benjamin into a cab and looks around, considering his options, thoughts moving slow and rather like a tilt-a-whirl because he may have been drinking less than his friend, but it wasn’t very much less.

The nearest subway station’s two blocks from here. A cab would probably be better, but the toll over the bridge always annoys him.

The city’s twinkling around him. His skin is overly warm from the alcohol, and the cool air feels amazing on his face. His feet take him up the streets to the station, and then past it, because to his happy, tipsy brain, it seems like a great idea to just walk Manhattan, uptown, turning occasionally between avenues to avoid the crowded intersections. Before long, he’s at an address he recognizes: Harvey’s high rise. He ends up just standing on the sidewalk, staring at the soaring metal and glass and light.

“Mike?”

Mike spins around, not sure how long he’d been in that reverie, or trance, or whatever that thing was. Harvey’s walking over to him, in the opposite direction from a black town car that’s pulling away from the curb.

“Uh.” Mike runs a hand through his hair. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Harvey replies with a little smile, curious. “What’re you doing here?”

“I was just…” Mike gestures vaguely at the building, unsure himself. Then his memory reminds him of something. “Oh shit, tomorrow’s the hearing! You should go up so you’re rested, I don’t know what I’m...I’ll just…” he fumbles, pointing jerkily over his shoulder and makes to leave, but Harvey’s hand closes around his arm. He draws Mike back, staring into his eyes, and Mike curses inwardly as he tries to focus in return, because it turns out he’s way drunker than he thought.

“Wow, okay, no, you’re going to get mugged,” Harvey says.

Mike scoffs. “No, I’m not,” he says, with the assurance of the highly inebriated.

“Can you walk in a straight line?” Harvey demands, except patiently. Patient demanding, Harvey Specter style. Now he’s raising his eyebrows at Mike, and Mike wonders if he said that out loud, and also belatedly remembers what Harvey said was a _challenge,_ so Mike shrugs him off, ignoring the laughter in his eyes.

He points at Harvey as he walks backward, away, a few feet.  _Watch_. Harvey puts his hands in his coat pockets and tilts his head expectantly. Mike focuses on the concrete, and puts one foot in front of the other, and then the next, and then the next. A perfectly straight line. He looks up, and he’s not much closer. A very slow straight line. He exhales, shoulders slumping.

“See what I mean?” Harvey says, sounding like he’s trying for gracious and gentle but coming off like a smug know-it-all anyway.

“It’s fine, I’ll get a cab,” Mike mutters, stepping closer to the curb, but Harvey stops him with a hand on his chest. Mike looks down at it in confusion.

“Or you can do the sane thing and come upstairs,” Harvey says.

Mike starts to protest that that’s not the sane thing, but Harvey turns him around with a hand on his arm again and all the colors in the world blur a little and yeah, okay, maybe it is the sane thing. He has confused impressions of a security guard behind a desk, a lobby, a _very_ cool elevator -- glass! City lights! Also Harvey smells _really_ good -- and then he’s sitting on a comfy couch and Harvey’s handing him a glass of ice water. Mike drinks obediently, and the cold, clear liquid feels like heaven in his throat.

“So,” comes Harvey’s voice when he’s done, and he looks up to see Harvey sitting on an equally comfy-looking chair across from him, leaning forward. “You gonna explain why you’re hammered?”

That sends Mike into a chuckling fit. “ _Hammered_ ,” he repeats, and stops when he sees Harvey’s bemused expression, straightening up. “Um, I was...with a friend from my graduating year at the Corps’,” he recalls, and stops.

“And?” Harvey prompts.

“And he works as a research scientist on the West Coast, as a biologist, and he said…” Mike feels a sudden wave of clarity wash through him and he refocuses on Harvey. “I just remembered why I came here. He had an unofficial update on the timeframes.”

Harvey straightens up suddenly at that. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me.”

Mike repeats everything Benjamin told him, including the other fragments of information he’d dropped over the course of the evening, verbatim. At one point, Harvey reaches for an expensive-looking pen and notepad lying on a side table and starts writing things down. Once Mike is done, they sit in silence for a minute.

“You have to stop them,” Mike says. Harvey looks up at him. “Don’t let them get away with it. This bullshit sense of security they get from the idea of the wall -- it’s completely false and I don’t want them to only figure that out after we’ve lost millions of lives that risking, like, less than a hundred pilots could’ve saved. And I know you can argue that it’s easy for me to say, I’ve never been out there myself, but I’m trying, I’m trying to make it so the Jaegers can be like drones and everyone says that’s impossible but I could do it if I just had _time_ …”

“Mike, it’s okay,” Harvey interrupts, getting up, heading off to somewhere in his bedroom which straight-up adjoins the living room, weird floor plan.

“And without the mechs to hold them off,” Mike rolls on. “We all die anyway. Grammy...she hasn’t got much time either way, I know that, but she deserves to go on her own terms, not some freak of nature’s. And it’s not even just that, it’s...it’s the program itself. If I hadn’t had that to focus on, my life would’ve fallen apart after my parents died,” he finishes, staring at his glass, empty save for the melting ice cubes. “I’ve got nothing else.”

Harvey’s legs come into his field of vision, stopping right in front of him and Mike lifts his gaze up to Harvey’s face. He has that professional blandness on again, and Mike frowns, blinking, until he’s distracted by the plush blanket Harvey’s holding out to him.

“You should sleep it off here,” Harvey says, and Mike, with sudden exhaustion from the evening, from the always-simmering anxiety catching up with him, nods. However, when he grasps the blanket, Harvey doesn’t let go. Mike looks back up at him. “I’m sorry, Mike,” he says.

“For what?”

Harvey opens his mouth, closes it again, and lets go of the blanket. “About your parents. I didn’t know,” Harvey says, and picks up the empty glass. Mike’s pretty sure that wasn’t what he was going to say, and also, as he stares at the fabric in his hands, pretty sure this is more awkward than he’s able to register at the moment, but surely will in the morning. He should be in his own apartment.

He starts to get up, but Harvey, who’s returning after depositing the glass somewhere in the kitchen island vicinity, seems to know what he’s thinking. “Seriously, it’s okay,” he assures Mike. “I’ll sleep better knowing the best engineer in the Corps’ is sleeping on my couch, not wandering around the city drunk,” he adds with a smirk, and Mike’s cheeks burn.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, even as he sinks back down into the comfy softness, allowing himself to lie down. “I should’ve known I was overdoing it, I usually do. Know, that is. Not overdo it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Harvey calls over his shoulder as he heads to his bedroom. “I have to leave early in the morning. If I’m gone when you wake up, make sure the door’s closed behind you when you leave.”

Mike nods, eyes drifting shut, making vague plans about how he’s going to apologize and/or regain his dignity once all the alcohol wears off.

* * *

Sleep’s been difficult, ever since it happened. It’s not that he has nightmares, exactly, not anymore, just recurring images, haunting in their clarity.

Blood, his own, on the white material of his suit.

Snow.

Icy air through his broken faceplate.

Knifehead slicing through Gipsy like a transatlantic ship through a dock.

Ambien helps, but he still only manages roughly three to four hours a night. Mike’s still passed out when he leaves, curled up and peaceful-looking, hair ruffled, eyelashes dark and fluttering as his eyes move under closed eyelids. REM sleep, the deepest. The one that comes after dreamless sleep. Delta, slow-wave, Stages 3 and 4 Non-REM. All those terms Harvey’s learned only because they describe states he rarely achieves.

He’s annoyed at the guilt nudging at him as he descends to the parking garage in the early dawn, because it’s completely misplaced. A) This isn’t even his idea, he’s just the face for it. He’s just carrying out orders, B) It’s for the greater good, C) Mike will see that in time, and D) It shouldn’t even matter. Still, he thinks about Mike’s drunken rant/confession and there’s unease he can’t shake.

He gets behind the wheel of this month’s car, pausing to clear his head. He glances down at his outfit and breathes a humorless laugh.

Cufflinks. Ties. Silk and wool.

These are the suits Harvey Specter wears now.

 

He uses all the information Mike gave him.

Pilots die. Pilots die all the time. It used to be a one in ten occurrence, but it’s like the kaiju have learned their defenses, and keep learning. They’re adapting, evolving, and the Corps is losing Jaegers faster than it can build them. Category 5 kaiju are now coming through the breach. In light of all this, the world would rather accept false hope than face the facts. Standing before the Congressional committee, he tells them what they want to hear. He uses the data, and Mike’s name and pedigree to back his ‘stand’.

It plays out like the perfect courtroom drama -- the disillusioned ex-pilot whose arguments against the program’s risks carry more weight than if a politician or a civilian were arguing the same thing, opposite the marshal who personally oversaw the mission where his brother died.

Pentecost plays his part to perfection, although considering his part is just arguing for the program and the only thing he has to fake is anger at Harvey, that’s probably an easy feat. Harvey uses every oratory skill he’s learned in the last fifteen years (on top of his natural abilities), and knows it’s playing well for the cameras by the smug looks on the Congressmen’s faces.

When it’s done, Harvey steps off the stand, a bitter taste in his mouth, knowing this has been broadcast live all across the country, the world.

The next day, the Supreme Court overturns the referendum rule, and Congress scraps the program.


	6. Chapter 6

Mike’s ignored the calls, and deleted the voicemails and texts promising explanations without listening to/reading them. Then there’s a knock on his door, and there’s Harvey.

“The fuck are you doing here?”

“If you’ll just let me explain…” Harvey actually sounds pleading, but Mike is done falling for any of his bullshit.

“I don’t need to hear it, Harvey,” he says tiredly, and starts to close the door, but Harvey blocks it with a palm.

“It was going to happen anyway. This was the only way to save the program.”

Mike lets go, frowning.

“Let me in and I’ll tell you. Please.”

Mike considers him for almost a minute. “This better be good,” he says.

“It is,” Harvey promises.

Mike steps aside reluctantly and lets Harvey in, closing the door behind him.

Harvey sheds his coat and unwinds his scarf, holding them up questioningly. Mike gestures at the sofa as he walks past him, putting space between them. Harvey’s obvious discomfort would’ve made him laugh if only the very sight of him didn’t disgust Mike right now.

Harvey sits down, settling into the cushions facing Mike, a clear attempt at faking comfort and defusing the tension in the room. Not that it works -- current circumstances aside, just seeing Harvey in his fancy suit here in Mike’s studio apartment is weird in itself. Mike leans against the counter and doesn’t say anything, waiting for Harvey to speak.

“This administration was never going to continue with the program, Mike. They’d already decided that. The vote was just for show.”

Mike stares at him. “How can you possibly know that?”

Harvey sighs, folding his hands together, leaning forward. “Why do you think Pentecost went to Jessica instead of a lobby?”

“Wait,” Mike demands, putting a hand out. “You’re telling me Pentecost knew?”

“Look, will you please sit? This will take a while,” Harvey says.

“No,” Mike says, shaking his head, but more confused now than angry. “If he knew, why the hell didn’t he tell me? Why are you the one telling me now?”

“Well, to be fair, he wanted to tell you now, but I insisted I should do it. Figured I had to set the record straight.”

“Why…” Mike breaks off, because there are too many questions, and finally silently accepts Harvey’s advice, walking over and sitting down on the opposite end of the couch from him. “Okay. Walk me through it.”

Harvey nods. “This was all orchestrated. They…” he laughs, as if even he can’t believe the absurdity of what he’s saying. “They cut a deal.”

“They as in Pentecost and?”

“They as in the government and the entire branch of the military responsible for the Jaeger program.”

Mike laughs harshly. “Sure, why not. And the deal is?”

“The deal is we play along with the program being discredited and shut down throughout NATO. In return, we take more resources and funding than they would’ve given us if we’d drawn it out here and we relocate to Hong Kong.”

“What the fuck.”

“I know,” Harvey says. “I didn’t know this was happening either until a few months ago, and I reacted much like you are now. Jessica did a better job explaining it to me than I’m doing, I gotta say.”

“I, okay,” Mike says. “You said ‘we’, which means…”

“I’m going back into service.”

“Wouldn’t that completely defeat the point of you testifying?” Mike exclaims. “Everyone will know that little speech was bullshit, that everything this administration is doing is bullshit.”

“Well, considering everything they’ve gotten away with so far, I wouldn’t take that as a given,” Harvey replies. “But the key here is timing. Once the attacks pick up, everyone will know the wall was bullshit anyway and these guys can plead ignorance. But they’re counting on that happening after the next election, and on the fact that two-thirds of the time the kaiju attack Asia. Plus, they’re going to make it look like Pentecost basically went rogue after the shutdown and none of this was sanctioned, but it’s over there so it’s not their problem.”

Mike runs both hands through his hair. “They could have just funded the program. They could have saved the world.”

“They could have but they won’t.”

Mike turns to him, still pretty angry. “Was it worth publicly discrediting it? You could’ve tried pushing harder. You could’ve made a case for what you actually believe in.”

“We could’ve, but I think you and I both know we don’t have that kind of time.”

Mike frowns at the reference to his unknowing intel via Benjamin, shaking his head. “What about the Chinese government?”

Harvey rolls his eyes. “They’ve already given up Hong Kong as a bad cause. It it goes well, they can claim credit; if it doesn’t, they’ll say they had nothing to do with it either.”

Mike closes his eyes. “It’s like... _East, West, just points of the compass, each as stupid as the other,_ ” he mutters, and Harvey laughs helplessly.

After a pause in which Mike just stares at nothing, processing, Harvey says, “We’ll get more funds on our own. We don’t need them.”

“Oh, because vigilantism is better than the combined power of nations?”

“In this case, yes.”

“And where exactly are these funds going to come from?”

“A lot of places. They’ve been working on it for a while. Jessica has connections.”

“Jessica?”

“Where do you think the money is?” Harvey says, with a little smile.

Mike snorts. “Managing Partner, my ass.”

Harvey shrugs. “You know why you’re being let in on any of this at all, right?”

Mike gives him a look. “Yeah,” he breathes, getting up again to pace, to think, to contain the anger. “Because they want me there. Despite the fact you...they, whatever, didn’t think it necessary to tell me what was going on, even though there was no reason not to.”

“There was no reason _to_ ,” Harvey says, but his voice is gentle and placating. Somehow that just pisses Mike off.

“Right, because the risk I’d broadcast it was so great,” he says, as he paces. Harvey doesn’t say anything. “Despite all that, and despite the fact that I won’t be able to move the only family I have left. And the fact that even though I don’t get the same perks pilots and actual ranking officials do, I’ll have to deal with the same blowback as all of you because we’re all going to be insubordinates.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Once we’re out, they’re not going to care.”

“Because they think we’re all going to die, and we definitely will before they do.” Harvey has no answer for that either. “What if I refuse?”

Harvey looks up sharply at that. “If I remember correctly, you said this program was all you had.”

“Yeah, well, that was before I knew how shady it’s gonna get. Or that it would play me like a pawn.”

“That’s anger and fear talking,” Harvey breaks in, standing up, voice still infuriatingly calm. “Look, I get it. You’re still trying to find your feet, and this is all a lot to take in. But this was all done out of necessity, Mike. Think long-term, think of what you said to me Sunday night. We need you.”

Mike sits down again, but this time on a stool next to the counter on the other side of the (admittedly not very large) room. Harvey nods, seeming to understand where his head’s at, and moves toward the door.

Before he leaves, however, he pauses, one hand on the doorknob. “Just...think about it, okay?” he says, and then he’s gone.

* * *

“Michael! This is a nice surprise.”

“Hi Grammy,” Mike says, kissing her on the forehead. She smiles and pats his cheek. He usually comes by on weekends, but, well, with no official clearance at the hangar anymore…

It must show on his face, because she says, “Oh for goodness’ sake, stop looking like that and tell me what it is.”

Mike laughs ruefully, sits down across from her and tells her the whole story. He expects it when she rolls her eyes at his recounted outburst, and calls him on it for exactly the petulant little fit it was. “I know, I know, but it’s just…”

“You’re not good with change,” she says in that simultaneously knowing and chastising way she has.

“Not change I haven’t thought out myself, no,” Mike agrees, ducking his head. He slides his palms together, slowly. “And I’m worried about leaving you behind, alone.”

“Didn’t you say the Marshal promised to foot the care home fees?”

“Yes,” Mike replies. He’d had a long talk with Pentecost, and that had been the most important part of it. “And despite this whole...thing,” he says, gesturing vaguely and sinking back in his chair, “I trust him to keep his word. But still, I can’t…”

Grammy shakes her head, reaching over and putting a hand over his. “I’ll be fine, Michael,” she says gently. “And I think you know there isn’t really a choice here. I think you already know what you’re going to do.”

Mike sighs, looking away. Grammy runs a hand through his hair, and tells him to toughen up, like she has countless times since it became just the two of them. This time, however, she adds on the heels of it, “I love you, Michael.”

“Love you too, Grammy.”

“Now bring over the chess board so I can school you.” Mike laughs and goes.

* * *

“ _I am here in Sydney, where earlier today a Category 4 broke through the recently built coastal wall in under an hour. The wall had previously been deemed unbreachable by its builders.”_

Mike watches his TV screen, considering.

“ _Ironically, it was the recently decommissioned Striker Eureka, stationed in the Sydney harbor and piloted by brothers Travis and Eric Tanner, which was brought back into action and finally took the beast down._ ”

The news channels play the footage of the Jaeger most of the time. The footage of the attack on the Australian wall is only played in split screen with much greater focus on the Striker Eureka footage, or not at all, but it’s there nevertheless.

Mike watches the machine guns and missiles installed on the ramparts falling uselessly into the water, over and over again.

* * *

It’s raining, the floodlights and plane lights reflecting in the soaked tarmac, the downpour turning the water next to the local base choppy.

Jessica and Pentecost left the base half an hour ago. Harvey’s just leaving the jet he stayed behind to inspect, when something catches his eye and he pauses in the plug door.

“Mike,” Harvey breathes. He’s standing under the small canopy protecting one of the floodlights from the rain, wrapped in a black windbreaker -- a slight figure from here, but Harvey can tell it’s him.

It’s been days and Harvey hasn’t heard a word from him. He’s still thinking about the cold, emotionless expression on Mike’s face before he’d started to believe him. Harvey hadn’t thought Mike was even capable of looking like that.

He descends the steel steps, heading Mike’s way, the wind tugging at his umbrella, uncomfortably aware of the beat of his own heart as he walks up to him.

“I thought about it,” Mike says once he’s within earshot.

“And?”

“How long has Jessica Pearson been part of this?”

“Pentecost’s been part of it too, Mike,” Harvey says, ducking under the canopy himself, out of the chilled rain. Mike’s got his hands in his pockets. His face, so like an open book most of the time, gives nothing away.

“And you?”

“I’m...more recent.”

Mike just looks at him, gaze searching.

“Was I picked because I have the least to lose?”

Harvey laughs in disbelief. “Okay, I get that you’re still mad, but that’s just narcissism.”

Mike raises his eyebrows.

“We’re not taking personal lives into account here. We don’t have the time, and we can’t afford it. You should know that, you’re the one who gave me the data.”

“Data I could’ve just as easily given you -- probably more easily -- if you’d just told me the truth.”

Harvey sighs in frustration. “Pentecost said…”

“I’ve had words with Pentecost already.”

“What do you want to hear from me, then?” Harvey asks him.

“I want to know how much you knew, that first time you came to the hangar.”

“Everything that was going to happen at the hearing and why. Not much about you. Only that you were the head specialist in New York.”

“And now?”

“Now, I’ve seen you work, and I know we need you. Even if we had a surplus of engineers willing to leave their families behind and come, which I’m not going to lie to you, we don’t, we’d need you. Like it or not, you’re the best there is.”

“Is that why you insisted on being the one to give me the briefing?”

“Yes. Look,” Harvey says, deciding to compensate for earlier by just telling the truth now. “I’m most likely going to die, most of us are; and if I am, I’d much rather do it in the best damn Jaeger the world has ever seen.”

Something clears in Mike’s face, like some buried tension there easing, relaxing.

“So?” Harvey spreads his hands. “Wanna come save the world?”

Mike leans against the base of the floodlight, watches the rays cut through the rain, and crosses his arms. Finally, his mouth crooks up on one side.

“ _If we are marked to die, we are enough._ ”

Harvey could swear his own relieved smile is as bright as the damn floodlight, and he can’t bring himself to smother it.

“Shakespeare, not a movie, but I’ll take it.”


	7. Chapter 7

1800 hours.

Their new home/base/workplace/factory/station becomes visible as the jet descends and the Hong Kong coastline comes into view once they clear the clouds. They close in on the bay.

“It’s called the Shatterdome,” says Hermann Gottlieb, the to-be-resident physicist, one of the staff Mike’s sharing the plane with, looking out the window with him.

It’s pretty much a metal fortress, there’s no other word for it. It sprawls for acres, nestled against a hill, probably extending into it. Banks of satellite dishes and transmitters edge its corners. There are so many planes and choppers around it they look like litter from up here.

“Does it have pneumatic doors?” Mike asks, half-jokingly, and then shuts up when Gottlieb points at the row of doors to the hangar that look like they could very well be pneumatic.

It’s calming, though. This might be a different continent, and he doesn’t speak Cantonese, but once he’s got his bags tucked away in his standard-size quarters and has made his way to the mechs, he knows exactly what to do. Equipment and the Corps’ regs are close to a universal language, kind of like math.

He spends the day taking inventory and meeting the team he’ll be leading. The finished Jaegers need upgrading, and there’s plenty of scraps for new ones. A Mark I reactor here, weapons from Mark IIs and IIIs there, and the designs begin taking shape in his mind.

 

It takes a lot of workers, from skilled engineers to those who specialize in literal heavy lifting, to build a Jaeger, and a makeshift hangar filled with them is a hell of a thing.

As Harvey walks through, he marvels at the scale of the place. Sparks from welding torches like fireflies light up every few feet, everywhere a Jaeger is. The arched supports holding up the elevated walkways far above them make it look a little bit like the biggest cathedral ever built.

It’s swarming with activity. He hasn’t run into Pentecost yet, is staying away from the control room, and he prefers it that way for at least a while.

He catches snippets of conversation from the other engineers and crew as he passes, dodging the occasional golf cart.

“The decommissioned units from Alaska…”

“-- the Wei-Tang triplets --”

“...don’t even know how they’re going to program all the new ones.”

Harvey smirks at that. He’s not worried on that count; they’ve got a walking repository of codes.

At the center, tables have been pushed together to make a huge workspace. Harvey draws close to it, recognizing the blueprints as Mike’s work, and whistles at the sheer number. It hasn’t even been half a day. He looks up and matches each to a mecha, some complete, some half-done but already in progress, some just starting out.

At this rate, they’ll have an arsenal in a week. He can see Gipsy at the far end, thankfully one of the ones they were able to bring over, the red reactor core in her chest glowing bright.

He walks over, then gets into one of the mine cages attached to the scaffolding (the walkways are on eye-level with the Jaegers and he doesn’t feel like climbing all those floors). He watches the ground drop away and the people get smaller as the cage climbs, nodding if he catches someone’s eye when he passes every tenth floor or so where there are workspaces for more extensive repairs.

When he gets to the level of the walkways, he heads straight for the workspace next to Gipsy’s head -- or as the engineers call it, the conn-pod -- running a reverent hand over the reinforced glass of her visor. The inside is dark, no one’s working on her right now, which makes sense, he supposes. She’s in perfect condition.

With a pat to the metal, he walks the other way, retracing the path he just took on ground level. Down there is warm halogen lighting everywhere to augment the sunlight coming in from the apertured roof so far above, but up here it’s even more pleasant, which is maybe a little strange, considering it’s basically a factory.

He turns a corner and finally spots Mike at the end of another walkway. He’s leaning on the railing, hands set wide apart, watching three in-progress Jaegers at once, looking pleased. It’s a good look on him, but then, Harvey thinks, most are.

* * *

“ _Rangers, this is Marshal Pentecost.”_

_“Ship secure.”_

_“Grab the boat and get out of there. Do you copy? Grab the boat and get out of there, now!”_

It’s like every time he sees the man, the memories of all the commands from that day, obeyed and disobeyed, come rushing back; as if the very sight of him is a trip wire. Harvey supposed he should get used to it, however. He’s going to be taking more orders from him soon enough.

“Marshal,” he greets stiffly as he gets into the giant elevator down to quarters, finding Pentecost already there next to a bunch of specimen tanks with kaiju parts floating in clear green fluid.

Before the marshal can reply, however, a strident voice calls, “Wait, wait! Hold the door please!” A man who looks rather like a stretched noodle runs in from the landing pad adjoining the hangar, closely followed by a shorter man in a parka with the hood pulled up, huffing, “Thank you, thank you!”

“Phew, sorry!” the first man says, putting himself between the tanks and the others, unsubtly pushing Harvey and Pentecost away from them. “Sorry, but please stay back. Kaiju specimens, very delicate, extremely rare. Look, don’t touch, please.”

“Dr. Geiszler,” Pentecost says mildly. “I presumed you’d arrived when I saw them.”

“Yeah, sorry, got held up signing them in,” says Geiszler, taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves.

“Mr. Specter, this is Dr. Geizler and Dr. Gottlieb, our research department,” Pentecost says.

“Oh, nah, call me Benjamin. Only my mother calls me doctor,” the noodle guy puts in.

Harvey nods at them, eyes catching on a tattoo on Geiszler’s forearm. “Yamarashi?” he asks.

“Oh! This little kaiju? Yeah,” Geiszler laughs nervously, looking down at it.

“My brother and I took it down in 2019,” Harvey says thoughtfully.

“I remember, I watched the whole thing live,” Geiszler replies, eyes alight with almost manic glee. “You know it was one of the biggest Category 3s ever? It was 2,500 tons of awesome!” Off Harvey and Pentecost’s awkward silence, he calms himself. “Or awful. You know. Whatever you want to call it.”

Gottlieb, who’d been struggling with the zipper of his parka this whole time, finally gets it to release. He pulls the coat off, disgruntledly saying, “Please excuse him, he’s a kaiju groupie, he loves them,” as he rolls it up.

“Shut up Hermann, I don’t love them, okay? I _study_ them,” Geiszler retorts. “And unlike most people, I want to see one alive and up close one day.”

The elevator finally stops at the level of the quarters. “Trust me, you don’t want to,” Harvey says before he gets out, following Pentecost.

“That’s our research division?” he says, once they’re out of earshot.

“Things have changed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not an army anymore, Mr. Specter,” Pentecost says sourly, not even looking back.

“What would you call us, then?”

“The resistance,” Pentecost replies, as if it’s obvious.

Maybe it is, Harvey supposes. He’s lost track of a lot of things in his time away.

 

Candidate tryouts aren’t going well for Harvey.

“5-0,” calls out the referee, and yet another cadet leaves the training mat, slinking resentfully off (presumably to the other training room across the hall where actual pilot matches are being made and not being held up by Harvey).

It’s no use. They’re all _kids,_ easily folding against Harvey’s lightest moves. Forget sharing the load, forming a neural bridge with him will probably short-circuit their brains.

He looks up and sees Mike -- who’s been monitoring everyone’s fighting styles so he can program the mechs to suit them -- sitting on the steps, watching thoughtfully. When he catches his eye, Mike tilts his head, a smile playing around his lips. Little imp.

 

The day was a bust and Harvey has to give it up as a bad job.

But on the bright side: Hong Kong is full of beautiful people, and the night is young. Harvey’s already discovered a bar he loves, for his fellow clientele as much as the decor. There’s just something about unwinding with a drink while sitting between kaiju bones, listening to talk of prophecies as the night wears on and the alcohol flows more freely, all rounded off nicely with whomever he’s decided to take home that night.

He anticipates he’ll be coming here a lot when he gets tired of the Shatterdome.

 

Harvey pauses in the doorway of the dining hall, surprised. Under the warm lighting, Mike’s sitting at one of the far tables, by the window. He glances up and when he sees Harvey, he gives him a nod. It’s 4 am, and Harvey wasn’t expecting to find anyone here. No one else is insomnia-ridden enough to wake up at 3 and go running, and the hall is empty when he comes in most mornings.

He grabs cereal, juice and a bagel out of the fridge, carrying the bagel over to the toaster and crossing the hall to Mike’s table when it’s done. Mike has his phone and a cup of black coffee in front of him and nothing else.

“Up early?” Harvey asks, sliding in at his table.

Mike shakes his head. “All-nighter.”

“Why?” Harvey asks, looking up.

“Just...working on a personal project, kind of.” He catches Harvey’s amused look. “What?”

“Nothing, I just can’t believe you’re the same guy I had to convince to get here.”

Mike smiles, rubbing a hand over his face tiredly. “You wouldn’t have had to…”

“If I’d just told you, yeah, yeah, I know,” Harvey finishes for him. “Need I remind you that I’m not in fact the chessmaster here?”

Mike’s eyes are amused over the hand he’s resting the lower half of his face in. “No, you’re just the knight. How is the chessmaster doing, by the way?”

“Great,” Harvey replies. Jessica’s still in the United States, wrangling all kinds of politics on Pentecost’s behalf, and is frankly in her element if the way she talks in their video conferences is anything to go by. “Working on smuggling more potential Rangers over, considering we have a shortage of drift-compatibility over here.”

“I may have noticed that,” Mike agrees.

Harvey makes a disgruntled sound. “I know you said you’ve never piloted one, but did you never want to?”

Mike unfolds his hands, lifting them for a moment in a ‘what can I say’ gesture. “We gave up in my first week in the program. Probably for the best. I don’t know if the death gratuity would’ve covered Grammy’s care.” He winces as he remembers Charles. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

Harvey shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Anyway,” Mike sips coffee to fill the awkward pause. “What about you? No promising matches yet?”

Harvey snorts. Mike had only sat in on the first day. It’s been three days of tryouts, with no luck. He’s thankful Jessica still sends him work to do or he would’ve gone out of his mind by now. “Nope. All I’ve got is a bunch of cadets pissed at me because I wiped the floor with them. Which is going to be just great if any of them become Rangers.”

Mike nods. “Been there.” At Harvey’s questioning look, he adds, “I never really bonded with the other recruits in my year.”

“Why not?”

Mike laughs. “You keep knocking people out and giving them nosebleeds with your brain, it kind of makes them look at you funny.”

“Must’ve been lonely.”

“Nah, I felt like a badass.”

“Of course,” Harvey says wryly. “How about the simulator? How do you do in there?”

“How do you think?” Mike grins.

“I know engineers don’t usually cross over and I know your history, but you should try out with me,” Harvey tells him, and Mike laughs.

“Not happening, you couldn’t handle the nosebleeds.”

Harvey lets it go with a smile, taking a bite of his breakfast and Mike returns to his coffee. As he chews, he watches Mike thoughtfully. “So, no actual neural bridge. Ever.”

Mike’s smile fades. “Not technically, no.”

Harvey gives him a _go-on_ look.

“I had this friend, Trevor Evans,” Mike says, gaze dropping to the table. “My best friend, all my life, since before my parents died. After...that, and before the program, he and Grammy were all I had.”

Harvey has this strange impulse to circle the table and sit next to Mike, but he stomps it. “I’m guessing he was in your year.”

“For exactly two weeks,” Mike sighs, putting the mug down and absently turning it around. “I always figured wherever we’d go, we’d go together.” He snorts. “I don’t know where we’d actually have gone if there’d been no kaiju and no Jaeger program, but considering how much time we spent high, I’m guessing it wouldn’t have been anywhere great.” He continues to look at the wood grain of the table, avoiding Harvey’s eyes. “When I saw Nova Hyperion on TV,” -- the first Jaeger ever built, Harvey remembers it clearly, everyone does -- “and heard about the program, it changed everything. I knew what I was going to do. Trevor was in too, who wasn’t? We wanted to enlist as soon as we came of age. And then, at some point, Trevor realized the army drug-tests. We’d have to give up our main recreation.” His eyes finally move up, meeting Harvey’s.

Harvey raises an eyebrow. “That’s a small price to pay.”

“Yeah. It was. I thought Trevor thought the same thing. He said as much,” Mike says, a hint of sadness in his voice. “This sounds like an afterschool special -- he was on harder stuff, and I knew that. But he was good at hiding just how much, and how much it had messed him up. Can’t hide that in the drift, though.”

Harvey can see where this is going. “What’d you see?”

His eyes grow distant. “How he really thought. How he saw me. He genuinely wanted to be a pilot just for the money and fame and because he thought it would get him even better access. He wanted to drop out eventually and deal. He thought of me as his ticket, nothing more. He always had. Seeing it laid out like that was messed up.” He shakes his head.

“You’re better off without him,” Harvey says firmly, and Mike looks at him, startled.

“Yeah, I know that.” He purses his lips, and Harvey’s distracted by his mouth for a second. “But to answer your question, no. No real neural bridge, unless a brief painful one counts. Also I gave him a nosebleed too,” he adds lightly.

Harvey laughs. “Alright. All I’m hearing is you should maybe try one more time, with me.”

“Aw, I’m flattered.” Mike grins at Harvey, who rolls his eyes. “Okay, but seriously? There’s a lot of candidates you haven’t tried out with yet. And they’ll need Jaegers of their own. Which reminds me, I should get back to work,” he adds, swinging his legs out from under the table.

 

As Mike swipes his ID to get into the hangar, he thinks about what Harvey said. Mike understands where he’s coming from. They’d expected trouble getting a viable arsenal together, even with all the scrapped programs from other countries pooling their resources here in this last battle station. But trouble finding drift-compatible cadets to become Rangers? That they hadn’t foreseen.

There were only two teams that were ready beforehand: the Wei-Tang triplets, who pilot the Jaeger Crimson Typhoon, and Sasha and Alexis Kaidonovsky, a Russian married couple who pilot Cherno Alpha.

Since the tryouts, they’ve only gotten two more teams. One is the Colombian brothers, Jose and Carlos Gomez. Mike’s built them a Jaeger they chose to name ‘Coyote Tango’ (they thought the name was hilarious) equipped to their style -- they’re grima fighters, and he’s had a lot of fun taking machete fencing and applying it to a machine.

The second team is Lola Jensen and Rachel Zane, who were a perfect match for each other and for their Jaeger, Tacit Ronin. It’s easy to tell what their relationship is (or might become, Mike doesn’t pry) because all the black eyeliner and leather jackets and metal chains in the world can’t distract from how puppy-eyed Jensen gets around Zane. Around everyone else though, she’s intimidating as fuck. Plus, she’s now on the research and development team with Mike and Benjamin and Gottlieb because she’s even better at coding than Mike is.

She’s also become part of Jessica’s team to ensure secure communications and transactions once Harvey found out about her. That’s what she appears to be working on when Mike passes her on his way to his own station, and when he conjectures exactly that she replies, “There’s a lot of corrupt politicians who’re making very generous donations today.”

“I’m not sure if you’re awesome or _terrifying_ ,” Mike tells her. Jaeger pilot, programmer and rebel hacker. Next to her, Mike feels inadequate.

“Both is good,” she replies absently, then adds: “Hey, when you restore Tacit can you make the missiles shoot out of her palms instead of lifting from the forearms? I feel like that’d be easier to manipulate.”

“Sure,” Mike says, pulling the blueprint over to him, then grins as he redoes the sketch. “I’ve perfected the hands _._ ”

“Ugh, Westworld?”

“What, it was a good movie.”

“No it wasn’t. That’s why he wrote Jurassic Park.”

“Seriously, you still like Jurassic Park after the kaiju?”

“Even after one crushed my Jaeger’s forearms, yes. Forearms you should be restoring, Chatty Cathy.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Tacit’s been the only mecha out in battle since they started here, going up against a Category 2 that had surfaced close to Thailand. She’d taken damage to her forearms in the fight, something all the countries with coastal walls had played up for their respective media, while insisting that the walls would have kept everyone safe. Easy to say after Lola and Rachel made sure they wouldn’t have to be tested.

He’s already got a crew on the damaged hulls, and on salvaging the parts from the forearms that can be reused. As soon as he’s done with the designing, they can start on the restoration. Time is of the essence -- he can have Tacit back up and running in a day or two, but if there’s another attack before he does and the other Rangers need backup, Lola and Rachel couldn’t take any of the others into battle instead.

It would be nice if pilots could just hop into any Jaeger without extensive individual adjustments, but they can’t, and making the adjustments to a different one, surprisingly, takes longer than just restoring their original mecha. It’s not that they’ll fight less well in a different one, they can’t fight in another one at all. Mike wishes the former were the case. Something’s better than nothing.

The thought catches in his mind, and he puts down his pencil, turning back to look at their not-in-use arsenal. _Something’s better than nothing._


	8. Chapter 8

The 3 am runs are just as well, Harvey thinks sourly. At least his unused energy has somewhere to go. He’s returning from another one, sweat pouring off him, when the sirens begin to sound.

“All personnel to battle stations,” comes the announcement over the PA system.

Rather than go to the dining hall which serves as a bunker for the cadets, Harvey turns around and makes his way to the control room, where he’s taken to sitting during attacks, Pentecost’s presence be damned. As Gottlieb predicted, the kaiju are coming more often, although they’re all Category 1s and 2s and can be taken out relatively quickly.

“Get me a visual,” Pentecost’s saying to Tendo Choi, when Harvey walks in the door. Choi usually mans the controls and comms from the base on missions. He’s another holdover from Harvey’s first stint, although Choi’s an old friend and Harvey’s kept in touch with him, so he’s already processed all the unpleasant memories related to him in a way he hadn’t with Pentecost. Also in the room, apart from the staffers on the other screens, is Mike, who watches every attack minutely to study potential glitches in the tech.

“Welcome,” Mike says cheerily, when he spots Harvey.

“Thanks,” Harvey mutters, dropping into a rolling chair and pulling up to the central table where he’ll be out of the way. “What’s it looking like?”

“Category 3, although we can’t be sure,” Mike replies, turning back to the screens.

Harvey glances up at the war clock, which keeps a count of the ‘Time Since Last Incident’, and wonders who on earth thought installing one here and in the hangar for ‘motivation’ was a good idea.

“One signature. Dilation indicated: Category 3,” says the AI from inside Crimson Typhoon, who’s been sent to take point on this one, with Tacit Ronin spotting her as backup.

“Man, did you have to make her sound like GLaDOS from Portal?” Choi asks Mike, referring to the AI. “I keep expecting the Jaegers to shoot holes in time and space.”

“I can make her sound like HAL if you want,” Mike offers.

“On second thought, GlaDOS is good.”

“Gentlemen,” Pentecost interrupts. “Focus."

They can get away with this, Harvey muses, because of how indispensable they are, especially once the kaiju surfaces and they kick into high gear. Choi, like most everyone here, is the best at what he does. Mike, in addition to his existing roles, never needs to take notes thanks to his memory. He just watches everything and has a flawless read and analysis at the end, so much so that Pentecost’s put him in charge of the debriefings. The marshal is...the marshal. Even the newbie Rangers, the Gomez brothers, or Lola and Rachel right now, he thinks, as he watches their screen, watches them easily take down the beast. They’re good.

The kaiju falls into the water with a huge splash and groan and the room erupts in celebration, except for Mike and Pentecost who immediately begin talking, dissecting the battle.

“Come on, Harvey,” Choi cajoles, when he turns around after high-fiving all the other operators and sees Harvey’s frown. “Look alive!”

Harvey grunts. After all that angst about getting back in, sitting out isn’t how he imagined his time here would go.

_You’re still my right-hand man,_ Jessica had assured him on their last call. _Your time will come soon enough. Besides, this leaves you more time to help me undermine the wall programs -- it’s not fun being the leader if there’s no one to lead._

Well, I didn’t vote for you, he’d quoted.

_Harvey. Shut up._

Still, she has a point, Harvey thinks, as he stands up and studies the camera feed of the rippling water where the kaiju had fallen. The walls, even with weapons mounted, are going to be useless because they’re only going to be able to fire from a distance. Kaiju need to be weakened before being attacked with weapons, with heavy blunt trauma that only a Jaeger can mete out, which is the only way they go down like this one did into the water. The oddly still rippling water…

“Wait a minute,” Harvey says.

Mike, who was standing a little distance next to him, goes quiet at that, also turning to the screens.

“Quiet!” Pentecost calls to the rest of the room.

All goes silent, the blips of the radar the only sound.

“They need to turn back,” Mike and Harvey say together, and then look at each other in surprise.

“What’s happening?” says Pentecost.

“It isn’t dead, it’s circling around,” Mike tells him.

“And it should surface right over...there,” Harvey says, pointing at a spot on the map.

Pentecost nods at Choi, who rushes back to the comms.

“Crimson, Tacit, turn around. I repeat, turn around! The kaiju’s still alive.”

_Gipsy, we’re still getting a signature. That kaiju is still alive._

Harvey studies the ripples and points at the map again, and Choi relays the coordinates to the Jaegers. They watch as the cameras on the Jaegers and the backup jets turn around, all focusing on the same spot, and listen to the sound of the Jaegers moving into position, drawing their weapons.

“Come on,” Harvey mutters.

“Movement detected,” says the AI.

The entire room sucks in a breath as the water roils and what looks like a small island starts to rise out of it. The beast surfaces, snarling, and then it’s battle time again.

Crimson gets beat up a bit but the pilots take the kaiju down for good this time and return safely. Harvey unclenches his fists, not even realizing he’d been clenching them to begin with.

 

Mike’s still breathing through the excitement of earlier, releasing it by working hands-on on fixing Crimson, which is currently open down to the pistons. He sketches the work the larger repair machinery is going to have to do, getting in the zone. When he gets up and turns around, he gives a small yelp of surprise, because Harvey’s right there.

“Don’t startle me,” he says, moving over to the table with his tools, putting on gloves and picking up a cog the size of his head with a pair of tongs. He moves over to the small furnace this platform, like many others in the hangar, is equipped with to get the metal to expand. Harvey comes up next to him, crossing his arms. “What do you want?” Mike asks. He’s very aware of how close Harvey is standing.

“You knew the same thing I did,” Harvey says.

_Only because I’ve obsessively watched that fight with Knifehead._

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he says instead.

“Mike, what harm will it do to try?”

Mike shakes his head stubbornly. “Aside from the fact that I’ve already tried way too many times and it has never worked and I never want to go through that again? This is not the time to send a virgin into battle.”

Harvey frowns, thrown for a second. “What movie is that?”

“None, that’s just me trying to make you shut up about this.”

Harvey exhales, frustrated. “Listen --”

“No, you listen, Harvey,” Mike says, slapping the cog onto an axle and turning back to him. “My place is here. Right now, the triplets and Lola and Rachel are decompressing, you think I could be in here fixing their Jaegers in time for the next attack if I was there with them?”

Harvey gives him a sardonic look. “You don’t have to do this yourself, you supervise a team, and Cherno and Coyote are taking the next attack. No part of that argument stands.”

Mike glares at him. “Stop trying to lawyer me. More importantly, I’m working on something.”

“The drone Jaegers?”

Mike looks at him, surprised he remembers. “Yeah. The drone Jaegers.”

Harvey sighs. “You think you can have them ready in time?” he asks, voice more subdued now.

“I don’t know, but I sure as hell won’t if I start spending time elsewhere. I need to have something that works before I can pitch it to Pentecost.”

“Okay.”

Mike’s taken aback at the concession. “Okay?” Harvey nods, mouth twisting. “Okay, then.”

He tries to shake off the weird, discontented feeling once Harvey leaves, but it doesn’t entirely work.

* * *

Benjamin storms in, wearing a long black leather jacket.

“You look like the ninth Doctor,” Mike says, glancing up, then returning to his blueprints.

They’ve appropriated a room for themselves, the ‘R&D’ team: There’s Benjamin’s specimen tanks along one wall, Gottlieb’s multi-sliding blackboards full of calculations on another, Mike’s drafting table in one corner, and Lola’s desk and computers in the fourth. It’s big enough that they don’t drive each other crazy but small enough that they can confer or piss each other off if they want to -- which it seems like Benjamin and Gottlieb really love to do.

“Yes, well, this city’s knock-offs market is fantastic,” Benjamin says, distractedly, unloading a variety of questionable-looking boxes from a bag. “Didn’t find the parts I was looking for, but found a really good leather store. Also bought you deodorant, Hermann, I can smell your armpits from here.”

“ _Ninety per cent of a man’s success in business is perspiration,_ ” Gottlieb says, unruffled.

“Next you’ll say _eighty percent of sex is just showing up_ ,” Benjamin replies.

“It’s success, not sex, and also that quote was originated by Woody Allen, can we not quote the pedophile?” Mike puts in.

“Yikes, sorry,” Benjamin winces. “And about the Freudian slip too, that was probably because I’ve proved conclusively today that that ‘kaiju bone powder gives you potency’ stuff is a scam,” Benjamin says.

“I really don’t want to know how you know that,” Mike mutters.

“I test every claim, it’s my job!” Benjamin says. He continues to ramble about what else he’s discovered today. Mike tunes him out after he gets to how one cubic meter of kaiju feces has enough phosphorus to fertilize an entire field and Mike has to throw his half-eaten apple in the trash.

Once he tunes them out, though, Benjamin and Gottlieb’s bickering makes for good white noise. (“For goodness’ sake, Geiszler, one does not simply drift with a Kaiju.” “Are you deliberately quoting _Fellowship_ or was that accidental? Knowing you it was probably accidental.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but listen, the neural surge alone would kill you!”)

He only comes out of the zone once Lola walks in.

“How’s Rachel?” he says with a grin.

“She’s fine, punk,” Lola says, sliding into a rolling chair and swiveling over to her desk. “How’s Specter?”

“Nuh uh, I’m not doing that with you.”

“You started it,” she shoots over her shoulder, then smirks. “Come on, Ross. Don’t tell me you’re not giving it thought.”

“I’m not. All I’m thinking about is how I should never have told you.” He’d let it slip when he’d gone to ask for her help with some of the code for the AI, and regretted it ever since.

“If you say so. I have no interest in becoming Punch and Judy over there,” she says, nodding at the two scientists. “I’m just saying it wouldn’t hurt to have more Jaegers in the rotation.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to make happen,” Mike mutters, annoyed.

* * *

Harvey runs a hand through his hair, elbow resting on his knee, as Jessica tells him about the new funds she’s managed to get, not strictly authorized.

“How’re we going to get them here?”

She waves a hand. “I set up a cryptocurrency.”

“Of course you did.” Leave it to Jessica Pearson to start an alternate black economy of her own.

* * *

“Going to sit another one out, Harv?” Travis Tanner says.

Harvey usually spars with the Kaidonovskys -- both equally (obviously) capable of taking him. No drift-compatibility, it’s like they work in a completely different rhythm, but at least it’s a challenge. Their Jaeger is modeled after the T-series tanks, except with kicked up tech added on, like Tesla cells in her fists, and fighting them is a useful exercise in endurance.

He has no idea what Tanner’s issue is -- his brother Eric Tanner hadn’t come with him to the Shatterdome, and Harvey doesn’t care enough to ask why. Harvey’s tryout with Tanner had been exceptionally bad, plus Harvey had wiped the floor with him, so he figures that’s why Tanner’s been throwing him venomous glares whenever he can.

Seems like now he wants payback. Harvey rolls his eyes.

“Yes, I am,” he replies. “As I seem to recall, so are you.” Tanner hasn’t found a drift-compatible match either. “Did everyone else beat you as easily as I did?” he adds, with an asshole grin, deliberately needling. He knows Tanner’s actually pretty good, just not on Harvey’s wavelength.

As expected, Tanner flushes angrily and scowls.

“You wanna go?” he calls, moving to one end of the mat.

“Sure, I could use a live punching bag,” Harvey answers. He positions himself on the far side of the mat, and does a ‘bring it’ gesture.

It’s even more brutal than the first time.

Not even ten minutes in, Tanner’s wincing as he gets up. Harvey thinks he’s about to cry uncle, but then Tanner lunges at him.

Harvey flips him almost without looking.

“4-0,” the cadet refereeing calls out, bored.

“Do you really want to keep going,” Harvey says to Tanner.

“No,” Tanner says.

“Thought so.”

He gets up, dusting his hands, half his mind on what Jessica told him on her last call, about more cadets that they’re going to send from all over the world, one of whom might hopefully become Harvey’s co-pilot.

The drift isn’t about winning, supposedly. Harvey disagrees. If you ask him, the drift’s about winning _together,_ and he has no time or patience for incompetent teammates.


	9. Chapter 9

“Sweet deal you have here,” Harvey comments, walking into their R&D room which actually looks more like a fantasy summer camp between all the comfortable furniture and appliances and food the four of them have smuggled in.

Mike tips his head back on his super-comfy chair to look at Harvey upside down, grinning. Devious punk.

 

Harvey smiles at him from across the room, and Mike’s inexplicably happy to see him.

“What’re you doing here?” Mike asks, pulling his chair around. “And what’re you doing in _that?_ ” he adds, cocking his head.

Harvey’s wearing the Jaeger pilot suit/armor, the navy blue-black polycarbonate glinting dully and looking almost black in the room’s lighting. The shoulder pauldrons make his already great shoulders look almost stylized. Mike doesn’t even bother hiding his interest, and Harvey grins. Mike suspects he knows exactly how he looks.

“Pentecost’s calling a meeting here. As for this, I was in the middle of a fitting. I figured I should get it done, just in case,” he says, walking further inside, surveying the room. “More cadets coming in, I might get lucky.”

“Ah,” Mike says, with a nod as he continues watching Harvey. “You know, it goes well with Gipsy’s aesthetic.”

Harvey looks at him, amused. “And what aesthetic is that?”

Mike shrugs. “A cross between the Chrysler building and a champion prize fighter,” he says, and Harvey laughs as he drops into a nearby chair. The rest of the team and Choi file in, followed by Pentecost.

“I’ve called you here to get us all on the same page with regard to what we know,” Pentecost says, without preamble. “You know we’re running short on pilots. Mr. Gottlieb has new estimates for us.” He looks to Gottlieb, who nods and gets up, picking up a giant pointer and moving to his blackboards.

“In the beginning, the kaiju attacks were spaced by 24 weeks, then twelve,” he explains. “But using that to extrapolate when the attacks will come didn’t work. The actual algorithm that has worked so far is telling me we should likely witness a double event within seven to ten days.”

“I was hoping we’d have a little more to go on than ‘should likely’,” Pentecost muses.

“He actually can’t give you anything more than a prediction,” Benjamin interjects.

“Predictions that have never been wrong so far and which are all we have to go on to settle this long-term,” Gottlieb snaps.

“Quiet,” Pentecost commands Benjamin. “Go on,” he adds to Gottlieb, who nods and moves over to his holographic modeling computer -- a jarring contrast to the blackboards he’s so fond of, Mike’s always thought.

“I _predict,”_ Gottlieb says, shooting a dirty look at Benjamin, who rolls his eyes, “that the attacks are going to get closer and closer together, and that more than one beast at the same time will come through more often. The increased traffic will force the breach to stabilize.”

He draws a circle in the top of the holograph. “Here is our universe.” He draws another circle right at the bottom. “And here is theirs.” He draws a vertical tunnel connecting the two. “And this is what we call ‘the throat’, the passage between the kaiju’s dimension and us. Right now, there is no way to tell where the pit will open up in our dimension, except that for some reason it’s always in the Pacific and frequently close to Asia. We can tell _roughly_ when, thanks to the formula. To tell specifically when and where, we currently rely on seismic anomalies that only manifest about an hour before each attack. Once the breach stabilizes, however,” he gestures at the holograph, “we’ll have a where. That where will not move before we can get to it, and we can attack the source itself. If we attack the pit with enough force,” he taps on the holograph, and the tunnel connecting the two funnels disentegrates, “-- we can cut off the bridge and end the menace for good.”

It sounds like good news but everyone catches the problem. Lola voices it: “But this will only happen once a fuckton of kaiju are coming through.”

“Yes,” Gottlieb says ruefully. “I believe there will be a small window between when the pit opens for good and the outpouring starts, in which we could conceivably pull off the attack. But there’s no guarantee we’ll get there in time.”

“How far in the future is this?” Mike asks.

“A while yet. A year, a year and a half.”

“I have an idea that can answer all these questions. And answer them precisely, not through estimates,” Benjamin pipes up.

“How?” Pentecost says, even while Gottlieb blusters, “Not this again.”

“We’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what we understand about the kaiju. See that?” Benjamin nods at one of the specimen tanks. “That’s a piece of a kaiju’s brain. Unfortunately, it’s damaged, but because it’s silicon-based it’s still alive. I suggest we establish a neural bridge with it.”

“You’re suggesting we initiate a drift with a kaiju.” Pentecost’s voice is absolutely flat.

“Well, not with a kaiju, just a small piece of its brain. We have the technology, don’t we?”

“You realize that would be the equivalent of giving someone a death sentence,” Pentecost says, and Gottlieb gives Benjamin a _told-you-so_ look behind his back.

“No it wouldn’t, it’s just part of the brain, whoever’s drifting with it could handle it.”

“You have no way of knowing that.”

“Sir…”

“No,” Pentecost says, impatience creeping into his tone. “Any other questions? Points of information?” he asks the room. Mike catches Harvey’s eye. Harvey shrugs. No one says anything. “Alright, then. Let’s reconvene after the double event to plan our strategy for attacking the pit. Until then, focus on having all our existing teams fully prepared. Clear?”

“Clear,” everyone murmurs, each already preoccupied with charting their tasks. Pentecost nods and exits, Choi doing the same after him. Mike tips his chair back, rapidly tapping the pen he was holding against his thigh as he thinks.

 

He finds Pentecost in the empty control room. It’s where the marshal prefers to think things over.

“Permission to speak, sir.”

“Permission granted, Mr. Ross,” he replies wryly.

“Okay, I want you to give this serious consideration before you say, ‘if we had more time.’” It’s something Pentecost is fond of saying these days, Mike’s noticed.

Pentecost gives him a look, but he nods.

“The codes I told you about? Lola’s looked all of them over. She’s tightened them. They have her seal of approval. Will you let me try automating some of those Jaegers now?”

Pentecost turns to him. “The last time we spoke about this, you said that once you start tinkering with a Jaeger’s interface, you won’t be able to turn it back to accommodating human pilots on short notice. Has that changed?”

Mike shakes his head, reluctantly.

“Can you have them ready in time, in the timeline Mr. Gottlieb gave us? Can you guarantee that taking a Jaeger out of the arsenal will be worth it, especially if we manage to find pilots on short notice, pilots we could have put in the Jaeger you took out?”

Mike sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Then we can’t.”

“But sir…”

“We’re pressed for resources, Mike,” Pentecost says. “We cannot afford it.”

“Can we afford to only have four active Jaegers in the rotation?”

“We’ll have more. Jessica Pearson is leading an entire team on this, worldwide, and Harvey Specter’s working as her eyes on the ground here. They know our circumstances. We’re all doing what we can, with all we’ve got.”

“What we’ve got currently is nothing if we don’t have more pilots.”

“They’ll come. They know to go to her.”

“Can you guarantee _that?”_ Mike counters. Pentecost doesn’t say anything, jaw tightening. “Sir, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes too much for just four. Something’s better than nothing.”

Pentecost considers him, and Mike waits. After a few moments, Pentecost holds up his index finger. “One. One Jaeger. And you get exactly one trial run. If it collapses in combat and doesn’t measure up to what it could have been with pilots running it, no more.”

Mike smiles. “I can work with that.”

* * *

Mike and Gottlieb are walking back from the dining hall together, discussing the timeline. They freeze at the threshold to the research room.

“Benjamin!” Mike shouts, at the same time Gottlieb yells, “Geiszler, what have you done?” Benjamin’s sitting in a wooden chair, electrodes attaching him to the kaiju brain sample, still floating in its tank. He’s twitching as if he’s having a seizure.

They run to him, moving to rip out the makeshift drift leads Benjamin’s fashioned for himself. He immediately collapses, blood flowing from his nostrils.

Mike struggles down with him, while Gottlieb blabbers in panic in the background, “I told him! I told him not to, the neural surge…”

“I’m gonna get the medics,” Mike starts to say, but pauses when Benjamin coughs, his hand flailing and coming to land on Mike’s leg for support. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he says uselessly, panic thankfully receding as Benjamin pushes against the floor, trying to get up.

He tries to persuade Benjamin to stay lying down, but he seems determined to scrabble unsteadily up, so Mike helps him maneuver into a chair that Gottlieb drags over, and then hurries to the other side of the room to grab the first-aid kit out from a drawer and a bottle of water from the fridge.

When he returns, Gottlieb is struggling to keep Benjamin in his seat. “I have to talk to Pentecost!” Benjamin’s insisting.

Gottlieb shoots Mike a pleading look, and Mike nods, putting his hand on Benjamin’s shoulder.

“Benjamin, calm down. Gottlieb’s gonna go get Pentecost. Drink this.” He presses the bottle into Benjamin’s hand, and Benjamin just stares at it. Well, at least he isn’t moving. Mike looks to Gottlieb, who nods in turn and scurries out of the room.

By the time he returns with an incredulous-looking Pentecost, Mike’s found Benjamin a dishtowel to stem the nosebleed, got him twitchily drinking the water and unsuccessfully tried to talk him into seeing the medics. For lack of anything else to do, he’s checking out Benjamin’s improvised drift apparatus (one of the parts is a _fireplace bellows)._

Benjamin’s restlessly bouncing his knees. He’s calmed down enough that he doesn’t immediately lunge for the marshal, but he does start up, exclaiming, “I told you it would work!”

“So you did,” Pentecost replies, making a lowering gesture with his hand. “What’d you see?”

Benjamin sits back down and blurts, “They’re _creating_ the kaiju, sir.”

He wipes at the blood around his nose and stares wildly at them. The room’s silent. He ploughs on. “The kaiju are engineered.”

Pentecost draws up a chair, expression grim. “Who is ‘they’?”

“It’s this alien species. The other dimension is like some kind of...anteverse,” Benjamin says, muffled around the tissue. “The kaiju are just their hunting dogs. They’re looking for planets to use as resources.”

“I’m not crazy!” he adds, when no one responds. “This is real!”

“We believe you,” Pentecost replies, a tired despair in his voice. “I think you should explain it all.”

“Okay,” Benjamin says, nodding. “Okay. Okay.” He takes a breath, and laughs shakily, devolving into a nervous ramble. “You know, it was only a fragment of a brain, so really all I was able to get was...a series of images, or impressions, you know, like when you blink your eyes over and over and over again, all you really see are frames, and, it was emotional, and…”

“Benjamin,” Pentecost interrupts.

“Right. The pit is a rip in time and space, but it’s one this species created. These beings, these Masters...they’re colonists. They overtake worlds. They’re engineering and sending the kaiju to wipe us out. The kaiju brains are all connected, like a hive mind. Anything that happens to them here, they learn over there. That’s how they keep coming back better prepared.”

Pentecost gets up, beginning to pace, his eyes taking on a thousand-yard stare. Mike and Gottlieb are pretty much stunned into immobility.

“The kaiju are basically genetically engineered bio-weapons of mass destruction and they thrive on ammonia-abundant environments,” Benjamin continues. “This isn’t the first time they’ve tried this...they tried to colonize the Earth before, in the time of the dinosaurs, but it didn’t work, although that explains the similarities -- that’s where they got the design from…”

Mike has to ask. “You’re telling us kaiju fought dinosaurs?”

“I mean...yeah. But the environment wasn’t suitable. But now? Now we’ve practically terraformed the Earth for them.” He turns to Pentecost. “From here on out, the Masters are only going to escalate the attacks.”

Pentecost nods grimly. “What about the timeline? Are Mr. Gottlieb’s predictions accurate?”

Benjamin swallows. “For the big attacks and the breach stabilization? Yes, more or less. But here’s what he couldn’t have predicted: there will be random attacks of smaller category kaiju, specifically designed to bombard and tire our four Jaegers out, because they’ve figured out that’s all we’ve got.” He doesn’t look happy to have been proved right in his contest with Gottlieb. “No matter how many new Jaegers we get out there, they will figure out our plays and adjust.”

Mike sinks into a chair. There goes the potential ace up their sleeve with the drone Jaegers.

“What about the breach itself? Any insight into where it will manifest? Can we attack it before it stabilizes?”

Benjamin shakes his head ruefully. “None of that was in this fragment. I have no idea.”

Pentecost returns to pacing, considering, then turns back to him. “I need you to do it again.”

“I can’t, I’d need a fresh sample,” Benjamin says. “Unless you happen to have one lying around…” he trails off as he looks at Pentecost’s pensive expression. “Do you?”

As they discuss the black market and kaiju cults and someone called Hannibal Chau, Mike slips out of the room. He has nothing to contribute to or learn from that conversation, and he has to come to terms with the fact that they might lose all their mechs before he ever successfully creates a drone, the idea of which he’d been hanging on to to convince himself the world might make it through this.

They’re not dealing with a natural disaster, they’re dealing with an intelligent species with a _goal:_ to eliminate them, to not stop until they’re eliminated. What’s he supposed to do now?

* * *

Pentecost had summoned Harvey and filled him in immediately. Harvey knew the purpose of that was so he could relay the information to Jessica and the team right away. But he’d noticed Mike’s absence from the room and decided Jessica and the team could wait an hour.

He goes to the empty control room, which overlooks the hangar, and sure enough, Mike’s there in the darkened room, back to the door, staring at the blueprints spread out on a side table. Probably the product of years of work.

Harvey watches him, the confused way he touches the papers in front of him, like his mind is far away.

“We can still stop them.”

Mike turns, apparently not even startled to see him there, the lights from the hangar throwing shadows across his face and catching in his hair.

“In less than a year?” He doesn’t sound despairing, or skeptical, or...anything. Just lost. Harvey relates.

“Yes.”

Mike crosses his arms. “Why do you think me being a Ranger is going to help?”

Harvey steps forward, into the room. “Even if you could get drones out there in a few months or a year, how effective are they going to be compared to one more in the rotation with pilots right now?” he asks.

“Harvey…”

“Aren’t you a genius? You can do the math.”

Mike doesn’t say anything. He can. Nine pilots total, despite the dozens in training and trying out. One benched.

“Mike, listen to me. I get that you’re trying to save everyone, even the pilots. But you’re not dealing in reality. The Shatterdome needs to last until the attack on the breach and it’s much more likely that’ll happen if there’s five full-capacity teams. You can keep working on the automated ones in your time off if you want, no one’s stopping you.”

“One of these days, you’ve got to stop convincing me to do what you want.” But his voice is soft, and he isn’t asking if they’d even be drift-compatible.

Harvey exhales. “Good.”

“This doesn’t mean I’m getting into a Jaeger just yet, either.”

“Just think about it, okay?” Harvey grins. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bastons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baston_\(weapon\))

“So what’re the attacks going to look like now?” Jessica asks.

“I don’t know, but I’m guessing we’ll find out,” Harvey replies.

* * *

“You might as well go back to your castle, Princess,” Tanner calls.

Harvey pauses in the corridor and looks at him incredulously.

“No, I’m serious,” Tanner continues, voice jeering. “We’ve got an alien species actively trying to eliminate us -- ” Ah. Word’s gotten out, then. “You can actually use your skill set with them instead of sitting here on your ass. I mean, it’s not like if we get into a fight, you could argue the kaiju into leaving.”

Harvey could defuse this, but he’s tired of Tanner biting at his ankles. “What ‘we’? You’ve been sitting on your ass since you got here yourself.”

Tanner reddens. “That isn’t my fault. All the cadets your mommy keeps sending are useless.”

The cadets in the crowd that’s gathering on each end of the corridor mutter angrily, and Harvey sighs, giving them an apologetic glance. “What, exactly, is your problem?” he asks Tanner.

“My problem? Is that you brought down the Jaeger program. It’s your fault they cut our funding and we’re stuck in this last-ditch hellhole.”

Harvey laughs. “Then take it up with Pentecost. I didn’t do this.”

“No?” Tanner says. “You and Jessica Pearson didn’t sway him at all? This was all him?”

“Yes,” Harvey says, the _‘obviously’_ implied. Tanner’s clearly more deranged than Harvey’s initial assessment of him, and there’s no point in prolonging this bullshit. He brushes past Tanner with a dismissive shake of his head.

“You know what I think? I think you never got over that wipeout fifteen years ago. You never forget that you’re an incompetent pilot.”

Harvey stops, breathing in and out, deep.

“You pretend to care but you _want_ us to fail so you can just die and be with your dead brother. The one that kaiju ate. What was the codename? Knifehead?”

Harvey doesn’t even register his own movement, his body turning and his fist connecting with Tanner’s jaw before he thinks about it. He doesn’t regret it.

“That’s enough, you piece of shit,” he says, while Tanner staggers and catches himself, wiping the blood from his mouth.

“Fuck you,” Tanner snarls.

Harvey’s ready for it when Tanner lunges at him, catching him around the stomach and barrelling into a wall. Harvey braces for the impact, and as soon as they hit, brings his arms down on Tanner’s neck in a hard neck chop. Tanner howls in pain, letting go and staggering backward, clutching at his neck.

Harvey’s thinking of walking away from this, but then Tanner moves forward again, unsteadily going for his jaw and Harvey jerks backwards, out of the way.

Tanner follows, trying a right hook and Harvey easily dodges to the left. Like the predictable idiot he is, Tanner then goes for the left, and Harvey’s moving to the right almost before Tanner’s moving. He brings his knee up while Tanner’s off-balance, Tanner doubles over with an ‘oof!’ and then Harvey grasps him by the back of the neck and throws him into a wall.

He knows it wasn’t forceful enough to cause permanent damage, which Tanner proves by groaning and coughing, but it looks like he’s finally down for the count.

Harvey’s just catching his breath when Pentecost strides into the corridor, barking, “What the hell is going on here?”

Tanner gives him a (pained) _what-the-hell-does-it-look-like_ look, and Harvey says, “Tanner here’s got some anger issues from having no partner, sir.”

Pentecost walks up to them, looking disapproving as Tanner slowly gets to his feet. “Well, maybe we can remedy that, Mr. Tanner. Another jet full of cadets has just come in. Can you gentlemen stop blocking the hallway and making a scene now?” he says, in that eerily calm way that indicates he’s furious.

Throwing them both a dirty look, Tanner stumbles off. Pentecost turns to Harvey, somehow glaring without actually glaring. Harvey shrugs and walks unsteadily away in the other direction.

* * *

Mike had heard about the altercation. The next day, when Tanner gets matched with Kyle Durant, one of the new cadets who’d proved to be an absolute turd in the less than twelve hours he’d been there, Mike laughs to himself, because it actually makes perfect sense.

“Jesus Christ,” Mike mutters, and hears Harvey’s soft snort in agreement. He’s waiting uninterestedly for his turn in the tryouts, leaning against the wall away from the crowd, next to the steps where Mike’s sitting and watching.

"You know, it might not actually be their fault they’re such assholes,” Mike says thoughtfully. “They’re both practically child soldiers. Fighting is all they’ve ever known.”

“Why are you defending them?” Harvey asks, but there’s no bite to it.

“I’m not, I’m just psychoanalyzing so I know what Jaeger to give them. I’m thinking they should stick to Striker Eureka.”

“The one Tanner ran in Australia?”

“Yup, with his brother, who didn’t come with him here. I’m thinking he was displacing his anger at his brother dropping out onto you.”

“What, are you a psychologist too?”

Mike smiles. “If you work with neural interfaces, you have to know some things. Did you know he has a dog?”

“Who, Tanner?”

“Yup, it’s an English bulldog. He brings him to the dining hall sometimes.”

“Okay, grasshopper, here’s my psychoanalysis,” Harvey says, continuing over Mike’s chuckle, “I think you’re rambling so I won’t have a chance to bring up how you promised to try out with me.”

“Okay, one, I didn’t _promise_ anything,” Mike says, holding up a finger and then putting up another one, “Two, it’s my job to know these things so I can adjust Striker accordingly, which takes priority over us trying out, and three, I want to kick up my training for a few days before I get on the mat with you, because I want to be ready.”

Harvey’s lips twitch in that way he has when he’s holding back a joke a 13-year-old would make, and Mike shakes his head. “You’re making excuses,” is all Harvey says, however.

“Believe what you want,” Mike says loftily, ignoring the catch in his chest that proves Harvey’s right.

* * *

He practices late, after the cadets and Rangers are done for the day. He hasn’t made up his mind, but circumstances being what they are, he’s pretty sure that won’t matter.

Even before he’d thought of trying out as a pilot, he liked to adapt his training routines to the different Jaeger models, just to mix it up. He’s good, plus he’s gotten better in his time here, though he says (or rather, thinks) it himself. There aren’t many moves he can’t pull off anymore -- the lighter agility needed for Crimson Typhoon, the power wrestling for Cherno Alpha. The gunslinger-boxer repertoire for Gipsy.

He avoids training at the same time as Harvey, though, for two reasons. First, obviously, because he doesn’t want to encourage him. Although Harvey doesn’t seem to want to push him on it as hard anymore, instead watching Mike watch his training sessions with a knowing little smirk on his face. Which brings Mike to the second reason -- ostensibly, he’s watching to adapt Gipsy to Harvey’s fighting style, but he’s fooling no one.

It’s hypnotic, watching him, the way he moves around the room. He fights like a maverick, never sticking to one particular style or discipline. He does favor boxing more often, but doesn’t limit himself to it. Sometimes he moves like water, all fluid grace. Other times he’s so quick his movements are hard to follow. You could never tell he hasn’t set foot in a Jaeger in over a decade. He’s kind of flattered Harvey thinks he could match him.

* * *

The slack Harvey gives him only lasts until the day before the attack, probably calculated such that Mike won’t have time to back out or rethink once things do come to a head. Mike should’ve known. Actually, he thinks he did, because even though he’s always alone in here, he’s not surprised when he hears Harvey’s voice.

“Not bad, for a rookie.”

He pauses, and turns around. Harvey’s standing on the steps in front of the open door, watching him consideringly. Mike lowers the baston.

Silently, Harvey walks down the steps, picks up a baston, sheds his shoes, and joins Mike on the mat.

“Not going to run away?”

“Thinking about it,” Mike answers honestly.

Harvey smiles, spins and angles the baston, moving into the ready stance. Mike mirrors him, muscles tensing in preparation.

“Remember, it’s about compatibility. It’s supposed to be a dialogue, not a fight,” Harvey reminds him. Then he smirks and adds, “But I’m not going to dial down my moves.”

“Okay,” Mike says. “Then neither will I.”

Harvey nods and steps forward, bringing the baston down, and Mike steps back, bringing his up until it’s ready to strike. Step one.

And then Harvey inhales sharply, rotates the baston and brings it down in an arc at Mike’s face, and Mike blocks it easily with his own.

Harvey laughs.

“1-0. You’ve been out of practice for years, I don’t know what you’re so smug about,” Mike says.

The baston drops, almost teasingly. “Alright, hotshot, your turn.”

Mike grins and steps back, while Harvey gets into position and telegraphs _come-at-me_ with his expression. Mike considers for a moment, running his tongue along the inside of his cheek as he pretends to think, and when he sees the tension in Harvey’s body waver as he grows impatient, he whips forward.

Turns out Harvey was pretending, too, because he ducks effortlessly, and when Mike turns, sweeping the baston around, Harvey’s ready and arrests his movement, hand closing around his baston and Mike’s, _and_ Mike’s hand, fingers light on the back of his palm. A shiver runs through Mike’s pelvis from that simple touch on his _hand._

He swallows. “Were you trying at all?” he asks Harvey, amused himself at the way his voice cracks.

“Nope,” Harvey says lightly. “1-1.”

They circle around and Harvey lets him go. Mike walks backward to the other side of the mat, Harvey’s eyes tracking him like a big cat’s.

“Arms up.”

That’s the only warning he gets but he blocks Harvey’s attack on his chest easily, planting his weight to resist Harvey’s momentum, the bastons locking together in a cross. Their bodies are mere inches apart and Mike can feel the heat of him. His eyes drop to Harvey’s lips.

“2-1,” Mike says. Harvey’s eyes are warm.

“What do you say we drop the sticks?” Harvey says, his voice lilting as if it’s something suggestive even though it makes no sense that way, and Mike rolls his eyes and smiles. He pushes with his arms and Harvey ambles backward, looking like he’s having the time of his life.

“Stop screwing around and get serious,” Mike tells him.

“Alright, calm down, Balboa.”

Mike thinks about that first day when Harvey came to the hangar, how he’d known where to stand to avoid the downwash from the choppers, the way he moves, the way he seems to _sense_ movement in the space around him, and knows what he has to do.

He steps forward, and instead of feinting or going for a direct attack, he starts a sequence: up, Harvey blocks, diagonal, Harvey blocks, up again, Harvey blocks, eyes narrowing as he focuses. Mike continues the onslaught, dueling Harvey, making him work, moving them around the mat, watching the exhilarated gleam in Harvey’s eyes.

A drop of sweat trickles down Harvey’s neck, and his movements slow by such a minuscule amount probably no one else would notice, but Mike sees his opening. He stops moving, abruptly, and when Harvey’s confused enough to drop his guard for just a second, Mike swings downward.

The baston hooks behind Harvey’s knees and Mike flips him, but Harvey’s ready for it and is already rolling, coming up to a kneel with one knee on the floor, forced into leaning back because Mike’s holding the edge of the baston under Harvey’s jaw, against his jugular.

“3-1,” Mike pants, with a cocky grin.

Harvey’s eyes narrow, and when he gets up and they start again, he stops playing around and really starts pushing forward. Mike wavers, enough that Harvey gets the score even again, but then Mike starts responding, absorbing the attacks and pushing back in turn, anticipating every onslaught, every feint.

The realization that they’re _(very)_ drift-compatible hits and in the moment it doesn’t even matter, the need to keep communicating like this overtaking any implications beyond this moment. It’s addictive.

They’d suspected, but feeling it in action like this is something else entirely. The way Harvey reaches with his right arm and Mike curves away with his left. Harvey steps forward and Mike steps back in perfect time. They move together, even in opposition. A conversation and a dance, all at once, with no words and no music.

Parry, duck, twist, jump.

They already know what they needed to, but Mike doesn’t want to stop. Harvey pauses, panting lightly, and Mike can see he doesn’t want to, either. When he drops the baston, Mike knows they’re not stopping, just switching to hand-to-hand, and he does the same. He gets into position, and Harvey starts to do the same but then straightens back up, frowning as he scrutinizes Mike.

A problem in his stance, Mike realizes. He holds carefully still as Harvey circles him, then steps up to him, close.

“Like this,” Harvey whispers, moving a hand under Mike’s elbow, and Mike automatically moves it up without contact. Harvey’s hand moves to his other shoulder, ghosting over his skin, never touching, just hovering above the surface, leaving little sparks of electricity as it goes, Mike could swear, and he adjusts accordingly, his own breathing going shallow at the sensation of Harvey’s breath on the back of his neck.

“Good,” Harvey says, low, and it takes all of Mike’s concentration not to shiver, to hold position.

He waits until Harvey’s across from him again, and the moment Harvey nods, in fact almost the moment before, Mike’s springing forward. Harvey meets him in the middle. Of course he does.

It’s a mess of blocking and striking and ducking, just like it was two minutes ago, but with sweat-damp skin and less room to think.

Harvey draws back, preparing to go for the knockout strike, but Mike’s ready for him.

He spins out of the way, lets Harvey lunge past him, then turns as quickly as he can. It’s not quick enough, because when Mike sweeps out a leg he knows Harvey sees it coming, but Harvey lets it happen anyway, landing hard, the air knocked out of his lungs first by the impact, then by Mike straddling him with a triumphant noise. “7-6.”

Harvey lets him have a moment where he gets to grin down at him, before he slides his hands up Mike’s thighs, watching his eyes go wide, and then effortlessly flips them. He stares up at Harvey’s face, so close to his, and suddenly he’s the one with too little air in his lungs.

7-7. Mike wonders who just played whom. He abruptly stops wondering or thinking at all when Harvey slides a hand into Mike’s hair, looks like he’s considering something, and then bows his head and captures Mike’s lips with his.

He moves carefully at first, just a chaste kiss, a warm, sweet pressure against his lips, hand sliding down to cup Mike’s jaw. Until Mike gives in, tips his head back, opens up, and Harvey licks into his mouth, both his hands cradling Mike’s face while Mike’s arms find their way around Harvey’s back, pulling him even closer, warm, solid, the thump of their heartbeats together, drenched in sweat, high on adrenaline, hot breath against his mouth.

He’s already hard, and he moves restlessly, giving as good as he gets, kissing as if this too is a competition, pulls at Harvey’s t-shirt, lets Harvey fit himself between his legs, tightens his thighs around Harvey’s, back arching.

Harvey’s already nipping at his lips and sliding Mike’s t-shirt up when Mike suddenly stops. “This is a bad idea,” he says, but doesn’t let go.

“Why?” Harvey asks, not moving.

“The next attack’s in six hours,” Mike sighs into his mouth. Harvey laughs hoarsely, pulling away just enough to press his forehead to Mike’s. Mike licks his lips, chasing the taste of Harvey he finds there. Harvey waits a beat, letting their pulses settle a bit, and then pulls away, rising to his feet. He holds out his hand, thumb extended bro-style, and Mike laughs and clasps it, letting Harvey pull him up.

“See you then, co-pilot,” Harvey says, pulling him close before he lets him go.


	11. Chapter 11

0400 hours.

The alarms are sounding. Civilians in the city have been evacuated into the bunkers. All the bridges have been shut down. Harvey’s talked Pentecost into letting them at least serve as backup on this op, last-minute activation notwithstanding.

Mike’s already gone ahead with his fitting while Harvey made their case. Not that it took a lot of arguing, to be honest. Tacit and Coyote were damaged in a surprise attack two days ago and are still in repairs, which leaves Cherno, Crimson, and Striker. The dilation of the breach is indicating they’ve got two Category 5s coming -- codenames Otachi and Leatherback. Even three Jaegers against two Category 5s aren’t great odds.

 

Harvey heads for the fitting room with the all-clear. Once inside, he pauses when he sees Mike in the armor, and Mike grins, the dark blue-black setting off the color of his eyes. Telegraphing _watch-yourself-or-I’ll-push-you-up-against-that-wall-right-now_ with his expression, he goes to get changed himself. Mike snickers. Message received but ignored, clearly. Harvey shakes his head as he suits up, listening to the metallic echo of Mike’s steps fade away as he leaves to go get into the conn-pod.

As he walks the platform to the conn-pod himself, he ignores the discomfort in his skin that indicates nerves, but it takes work. This is a -- no, _the,_ conn-pod he hasn’t come back to for fifteen years.

Then again, while it may be the same skeleton, it’s been revamped so much it looks different from the inside. Mike gives him a smile from where he’s already standing in the drift rig, the ground crew working on fitting the spinal clamp to his suit’s back. He looks so at home, so like he belongs there, that reassurance battles the nervousness in Harvey’s chest.

He focuses on his breathing as he holds still for his own drift rig and spinal clamp to be fitted. They put their helmets on together, and Harvey listens to the gears above his ears rotate, calibrating to his EMP levels, the AI reciting calmly, “Data on helmet. Data relay gel dispersing in circuitry suit.”

“Ready and aligned,” Harvey says into the radio.

“Prepare for neural handshake,” says the AI, and Harvey takes another deep breath as the crew files out.

“Stand clear!” he hears someone call and all the staff moves away from around the Jaeger. It’s only smart, in the event something goes wrong. Not that anything will go wrong. He can do this.

“Neural handshake initiating. In three…”

Mike frowns over at him, as if sensing his unease even before the drift starts. Harvey gives him a reassuring nod, continuing to ignore his own anxiety, distracting himself with how adorable Mike looks behind the tinted visor of his helmet.

“Two.”

Harvey looks to the front, at the hangar through Gipsy’s windscreen eyes, and braces. It’s been so long, and…

“One.”

And Harvey’s mind jerks away at the first touch of the drift, emotions spiraling out of his control, galloping away like a herd of wild horses. Harvey wonders even as he goes down, helpless to stop it, if this is why he really kept rejecting drift partners.

_“Harvey, Harvey, listen to me.”_

No, not this again.

Synchronized movements, raising his hands, Charles doing the same next to him, Gipsy bringing her arms down on Knifehead’s snout. Plasma cannons.

_“Kaiju signature rising!”_

Not again, not again, not again…

The sickening crunch of metal. Pain up Harvey’s arm, against his heart -- almost like an induced heart attack and then, Charlie’s voice. _“Harvey, listen…”_

Harvey whimpers, not wanting to live this again, Charlie’s terror, the pain and helplessness, his apology, followed by deafening silence, somehow more terrible than the pain, the drift rig collapsing, empty. He curls into himself slightly, braces for it…

And then Mike’s there.

“Almost lost you, there.”

Harvey pants, staring at him wildly, muscles still bunched, ready for the hurt. Gipsy’s frozen in time in the background. “What?” he says helplessly. He doesn’t even know when he opened his eyes.

Mike raises his hands, gently placing them on either side of Harvey’s head. The metal of his suit gloves blocks out Harvey’s peripheral vision, so all he can do is focus on Mike’s face.

“It’s okay. Stay with me.”

Harvey watches in confusion as Gipsy dissolves around them, and is replaced by...an apartment -- a living room. An old woman sits with her back to him, on a sofa next to an end table with a phone on it, her hand resting on the receiver.

On the sofa perpendicular to hers, a little boy sits with his face in his hands. As Harvey watches, the woman takes her hand off the phone, gets up and crouches in front of the boy and puts her arms around him. The boy buries his face in her shoulder, his sobs terrible to hear.

“What…” Harvey starts again, looking away, back to Mike, but Mike is gone. Harvey looks around for him, then back to the old woman and the boy, paying more attention to the boy’s face. He draws closer, frowning, and his brain calms down enough that it can make sense of what his eyes are showing him.

“Oh,” he breathes.

As he watches, the scene flickers, fades, and Mike -- present Mike -- comes back into view.

“How is this even happening?” Harvey asks him.

“It’s kind of like traumatic memory tug-of-war,” Mike explains. “That’s a big one you’ve got there.”

Harvey gives him a wan smile at that -- or at least, he tries, although he can feel it’s more a grimace. “You know, I’ve heard that before,” he jokes half-heartedly. Mike chuckles, but then Harvey winces and the scene pulls back to Gipsy -- not present Gipsy, Gipsy in the aftermath of his only remaining family being ripped from him: half-torn, gutted, Charles’ death everywhere.

Hearing about the death of your family, even two deaths, isn’t the same as witnessing one, _feeling_ it.

“Okay, this isn’t working,” Mike confirms. “I’m going to try something else. Hold on.”

He closes his eyes, resting his forehead against Harvey’s. Harvey closes his eyes again, too, breathing through it. They’re back in Mike’s childhood apartment, and Mike and his grandmother are still in their positions, but then, the light shifts, and it’s like an image is transposed on top of the earlier one.

Mike and his grandmother are still there, but there’s also Mike, older, pre-teenage, watching a Jaeger fight a kaiju on TV with his mouth open slightly. Harvey stares wonderingly at the way the mental images are overlaid, the flawless level of detail he can see. A TV showing Nova Hyperion, the very first. A TV showing nothing.

Schrödinger's TV, Harvey thinks, and laughs a little.

Then there’s another shift, and there’s also Mike, younger, much younger, with his parents. The almost physical twinge associated with them sends ripples through all three scenes. Another shift, and there’s an older Mike and a boy who must be Trevor, totally stoned and laughing over a pizza.

And then, Harvey feels Mike drop a restraint he hadn’t even known Mike was exercising, and it’s like a flood -- the room fills until it’s hard to make anything out. It doesn’t stop there, either. Mike pulls back, to other rooms, to buildings, to New York, to every place he has ever seen, every word he has ever read, every sound and touch and taste.

Harvey gasps, at the layer upon layer upon layer, infinite, of Mike’s memories.

The pressure is unbelievable, but as it turns out, for Harvey it’s also a lifebuoy. A shelter, of sorts. Gipsy’s wreck fades away, and he can breathe, can think. Mike’s still going, though, and he’s speeding up.

“Mike,” Harvey says, but there’s no response. Harvey follows his thoughts, calling up a memory of his own, pushing at Mike’s, the equivalent of putting out a hand to quiet someone’s hyperactivity. He feels Mike pause, startled, laugh in delight, and finally slow down. And there he is again, right in front of Harvey, eyes bright.

Harvey holds his gaze. After that, it just flows.

Charlie, 10 years old, frozen in time, on the playground swings.

Cappy, the Irish Setter Harvey and Charles had growing up.

Grammy’s face when Mike was recruited.

Trevor, there when no one else was.

Harvey’s parents, and...everything, all the pain associated with them, even before they died.

Years of loneliness.

“I understand.”

“Hey, it’s okay.”

Their memories intertwine like vines, like interlocked fingers, like puzzle pieces.

 

Harvey opens his eyes, truly in the present now, and tilts his head both ways, stretching out the muscles in his neck, settling in.

“Well, that’s...interesting,” Mike says breathlessly, once he sees how their little training session ended in Harvey’s head.

“Not bad yourself,” Harvey says.

Mike opens his eyes too, looking contemplative.

“How long were we out?” Harvey asks control.

“You weren’t,” Choi says, sounding confused.

Harvey’s mouth falls open and he looks at Mike, who’s smirking a little. Apparently (definitely, as Mike’s thoughts through the drift confirm) he’s not surprised at all. In his head, Mike quickly skims through the adjustments he’d made in the interface to allow for this, and even though Harvey has access to all his thoughts now, it’s way too complicated to make sense of immediately, so Harvey tells him to quiet down. Mike does, amused.

“Neural handshake at 100%,” says the AI.

“Rangers, are you ready?” Pentecost’s voice comes down the comm.

“Ready, sir,” Harvey radios back. “Initiating calibration procedures.”

“Right hemisphere, calibrating,” says the AI.

Harvey lifts an arm and listens to the pistons work as Gipsy’s right arm does the same, and the sensation filters through his brain. The rig lifts and locks into place and Harvey flashes a grin at Mike, who gives him a nod with his eyes narrowed and mouth pursed in a _oh-yes-you’re-very-legit_ face.

“Left hemisphere, calibrating,” says the AI.

Mike tests the left arm (and leg for good measure, the nerd), and his rig locks, too. They look up at the display together.

“Calibration complete.”

Mike asks for a mental fist-bump and Harvey side-eyes him exasperatedly but gives him one.

 

The problem with doing this last-minute is their transport wasn’t ready and they have to wait for one of the strike team’s choppers to come back for them.

“Striker Eureka’s near position, awaiting your orders,” Tanner’s voice comes down over the comm, which means the choppers can finally start flying back to the Shatterdome for Gipsy.

By the time they’re rigged up to the choppers and moving away from the coast, the battle’s well underway and the news they’re hearing through their comms is horrifying.

Not two, it’s three Category 5’s. Mike curses and asks the pilots and warrant officers to go faster. He gets a terse reply telling him they’re moving as fast as possible.

They listen with sinking hearts to the communications between the Rangers and control, plus the backup jets tracking the Jaegers from a distance relaying what’s going on, as the struggle gets worse, and finally...

“Typhoon is gone,” Alexis Kaidonovsky’s voice says over the line, and Mike curses. Harvey’s gone into grim battle focus mode though, and it helps keep him in the right headspace too.

From the sounds of it, Striker’s engaged with the third, unexpected monster -- codename Trespasser -- while Cherno handles Leatherback which is weakened from its fight with Crimson, and Otachi.

“Come on, come on,” Mike mutters. Harvey doesn’t say anything, still so focused he’s almost zen, if being zen meant being like a coiled snake.

Fifteen minutes out, and Trespasser is coordinating with Leatherback and Otachi, it turns out, keeping Striker occupied and away from Cherno Alpha. Cherno’s in trouble. As Mike sees where this is going, he understands Harvey’s headspace and lets himself slide into it as well -- refusal to engage with heavy emotion. The sorrow and despair is for processing later. Right now, they have one goal. Like a game, but win or die. Harvey approves of the shift in his thinking.

Ten minutes out and Cherno’s gone too -- conn-pod pierced, brutally held down underwater. They watch through the cameras as the kaiju then pierces Cherno Alpha through the fuel tank for good measure, which is almost a mercy since the alternative for the Kaidonovskys was death by drowning. “We just lost Cherno Alpha, sir,” they hear Choi confirm from control.

Five minutes out. “Trespasser’s down!” Kyle calls. Which still leaves Otachi and Leatherback. “Oh, shit…”

By the time they finally get to the drop site, Otachi’s literally _disabled_ Striker with some kind of EMP like a giant fucking electric eel. The Jaeger’s just standing there, lights out and unresponsive. Leatherback, confusingly, has turned around and made for the city, maybe thinking Striker’s not a threat anymore.

As the choppers stop, hovering, seagulls flying in the opposite direction avoiding them, Mike looks over through Gipsy’s zoom camera and whistles. He has to hand it to Tanner and Kyle. They might be colossal assholes, but cowards they are not. They’re standing on Striker Eureka’s shoulder with flare guns, firing at the monster’s eyes not ten yards away. It recoils with a shriek and Tanner and Kyle are probably a minute from getting eaten when Mike feels what Harvey’s about to do and grins.

“You good?” Harvey asks him.

“I’m good.”

“Good.”

Harvey presses a button and Gipsy’s reactor broadcasts a noise like all the keys on the world’s biggest church organ being pressed at once, and Otachi immediately turns around, away from Tanner and Kyle, hissing.

There’s no fear in this headspace. Instead, a wave of bloodthirst, of high voltage energy starts in them both and sweeps through the other, back and forth, curling and uncurling like a double helix.

 

At their signal, the helicopters let go with a sharp snapping sound and they drop, bending their knees so Gipsy does too, absorbing the shock of the landing, the water parting downright biblically for a moment, which Harvey’s ego really enjoys.

The monster comes barrelling at them and they block it easily, executing a lift and throw, so forceful that the thing shrieks in pain.

“Yeah!” comes Tanner’s voice over the radio, through the wireless in his suit. “Kick his ass, baby!”

Mike and Harvey both snort in disbelief.

“Settle down, Tanner,” Harvey calls, as he scans the monitors quickly for any sign of Leatherback, while they wait for Otachi to get its second wave (strategy: tire it out first). As he does, he smiles at Mike’s pure, alive delight at that first exchange of blows. You never forget your first, even if you don’t have Mike’s memory.

 

He stretches out his fingers, and Gipsy’s left hand does the same.

He moves here, and out there, giant metal fists land a hit on a kaiju. He didn’t think it would be like literally becoming the one and two in a one-two punch. He doesn’t even feel like a person. He feels like air.

Otachi gets up and they brace for it, but instead of lunging at them, it turns tail and heads for the city, and they glance at each other in confusion. Kaiju never do this, they always attack Jaegers the moment they see them. Still, it’s just them now, so they follow, stepping onto land, clearing the first buildings the kaiju casually destroyed.

There’s smoke and fire outside as Gipsy walks through the metropolis, but in here, it’s just cool metal and Harvey’s mind enveloping his. Or is it the other way around?

He doesn’t have a lot of time to contemplate that because Otachi drops onto them with another shriek from its perch, which was apparently on a building in their blind spot.

They fall forward under the force but slide out from under the beast immediately, rising as they spin around with arms up to block, a skyscraper-sized machine moving as smoothly as a person because they’re moving together, in perfect time. It’s like a dance, as always. A dance involving a lot of punching, once the monster loses patience with whatever game it was attempting to play.

When images of dried blood on white polycarbonate start to intrude, Mike bats them away, replacing them with calculations, with code, with reams upon reams of Jaeger trivia. They’re not individuals anymore, they’re a unit, a joint being with four arms, grief and ecstasy combined into flawless focus.

Harvey mentally tells him that’s enough waxing eloquent on the drift and Mike chuckles.

The sound of Leatherback shrieking somewhere in the distance distracts them enough that Otachi gets an opening. It launches itself at them, claws wrapping around Gipsy’s chest (Mike calms Harvey’s sudden spike of panic) and pushes, knocking Gipsy back, through three buildings and several telephone lines and back into the water. They brace together, turning the momentum into a landing, but then the kaiju is on them.

It’s trying to drown them, too.

Grunting at the neural feedback from the Jaeger, they push forward, and Gipsy locks her arms around the monster in an underside chokehold and rolls. The kaiju resists and they brawl like wrestlers for a tense minute until Gipsy finally gains the advantage, one hand on the back of the monster’s neck, the other further down the spine, throwing it in a flying snapmare, one of Mike’s favorite moves. In the process they rip out one of the spikes from its back.

“Nice,” Mike mutters in disgust, throwing the shell away as Harvey holds out a hand, ready to stop the beast once it’s recovered and is charging at them again, teeth bared. The moment it’s within range, Gipsy’s right hand grabs onto the protective shell above the kaiju’s face, and Mike moves into action, pummeling its face with Gipsy’s left fist again and again. It roars in pain, and when Harvey finally lets go and Mike stops, it stumbles, disoriented, and falls into the water. Harvey hauls it up by the mouth so that its underside is exposed.

“Hook!” Harvey calls.

“You’re enjoying this too much!” Mike yells back, as he throws a punch with added power from the elbow rockets.

Sure enough, Gipsy catches Otachi in the flank, clearly in a sensitive spot because the monster buckles with another shriek of pain. Mike can feel Harvey’s smugness through the drift, and laughs. “Yeah, yeah, you’re Muhammad Ali.”

As they prepare to deliver the kill shots, however, some... _thing_ shoots out of its sides and knocks them off their feet.

“What the fuck?” Harvey says with feeling, as they scramble back to their feet. Then they see what the thing was. Wings.

That’s all the warning they get before it lunges into the air unsteadily, grabs Gipsy by the arms, and takes off.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me!” Harvey yells.

“What, Ali doesn’t have a plan for this?”

“We’re in the air, dickhead!”

Mike seriously hopes a camera gets this, and that it scares the asses off anyone who still believes there’s any fucking point to the walls of life.

“Alright, I’ve got something for this,” he says.

“What...oh.”

“Yeah.”

Mike punches in the combination, eyes on the screen. “Sword deploying,” says the AI. Chains release from Gipsy’s left forearm and solidify into sharp, dangerous edges.

Mike waits until Harvey’s ready for it, then slices off the thing’s feet. Harvey quickly shoots the cannons straight up into its chest and then coordinates with Mike to engage the exhausts, so the fall -- thankfully from not that high to begin with -- is slowed. Otachi falls into the water before they do and lies there unmoving.

Mike wants to go after Leatherback immediately, but Harvey makes them pause for a second.

“We should check for a pulse,” Harvey pants, and Mike’s confused until Harvey lifts Gipsy’s arm and activates the long-range plasma cannon they won’t be able to use in the city. “Empty the clip,” Harvey commands the AI, and it does, until the kaiju corpse is just a mess of meat with the toxic blood (known as Kaiju blue because of its color) leaking out. Benjamin’s going to have kittens.

“No pulse,” Mike says, and Harvey drops his arm. They turn around, making their way into the city, hunting Leatherback.


	12. Chapter 12

It takes a surprisingly long time, and Harvey doesn’t like it. The further into the city they are, the more damage someone will have to fix later, not to mention the chances of hurting stragglers is higher. They’re at a large intersection next to the docks when finally…

“Harvey,” Mike says. Harvey follows his gaze to the rear-view screen.

It’s rummaging around in a _shelter_.

“I’ve got this,” Harvey mutters. He presses a button on the far end of the console, and Gipsy’s warning horn blares across the city. The kaiju freezes and withdraws its ugly head from the shelter instantly, turning to face them, as Gipsy makes her way over, casually carrying an oil tanker they picked up from the docks like a baseball bat. Harvey fucking loves that foghorn.

As they approach, the AI saying, “Torque engaged,” they watch with singular focus as the monster’s huge jowls containing the acid work, and when it screams, spitting out a jet of it, they dodge easily. They’re not going to fall like Cherno did. Not today. When it’s out of acid for the moment, regurgitating in preparation to shoot another stream, they charge forward and hit it with the boat hard enough to daze it for a few seconds, at which point they slice off the jowls on its underside. It screams again, unable to produce acid now, and scrambles away from them, turning sideways and into a different part of the city.

It’s quicker than Otachi was, and they have to work to track it, which is entertaining for Harvey because he’s got a soundtrack of Mike’s mental exclamations about smacking the kaiju in the face with an oil tanker the whole time.

“Can’t pinpoint it, it’s moving too quick,” Harvey tells control. “Get us eyes in the sky, over.”

They continue moving as the helicopters cautiously hover closer, reporting Leatherback’s movement so they can follow, closing in quick. Harvey keeps one ear on what Mike’s thinking, once he’s moved on from _boat sword!_ Their speed is to their advantage, because the kaiju, for all its body mass giving it strength and endurance, moves slowly. Gipsy on the other hand, is designed with aerodynamics in mind, down to retractable fins to reduce turbulence. Still, even having programmed her to be agile himself, it amazes him.

“Float like a butterfly,” Harvey agrees, and Mike rolls his eyes, trying not to smile. “There’s no point, I can feel how much you’re enjoying this.”

They close in on the kaiju one row of buildings away. They could keep walking until they’re on the same avenue, but...

“You _are_ thinking what I’m thinking,” Mike says and Harvey nods.

They stop in sync, and Gipsy does too. Harvey aims one of Gipsy’s beacons right over the buildings, in the direction of the kaiju, and flicks it on, sending out a ray of blinding light, and off. No reaction. He flicks it on again, slower, and after a longer pause, turns it off again. Nothing. He repeats the motion, super quick. Still nothing. Harvey keeps repeating the pattern, intermittently, always varying the speeds so it’s confusing and impossible to predict.

After a minute of this, with a desperate, angry shriek, Leatherback lunges sideways, through the buildings and onto their avenue, exactly as they’d expected it would. The moment the most damaging of the debris is gone, they launch themselves through the dust at the creature, putting it in a headlock while it’s still confused and landing blows to its skull with the other fist.

It shrieks painfully and they’re just starting to think they can kill it this way, when its tail whips around. It’s prehensile. Harvey grunts as it wraps around Gipsy’s right arm and the kaiju bites at them, breaking their hold on its neck.

“Mike!”

“Got it!” Mike replies, punching in a command to release the Jaeger’s coolant through the right arm. While Mike keeps the monster’s arms occupied, the coolant coats the tail and freezes rapidly, rendering the tail immobile and useless. Harvey flexes and twists his arm, and Gipsy’s right arm breaks out of the hold, frozen chunks of tail falling away. Leatherback goes berserk in rage, no sign of wanting to run away now, lunging at them instead with its claws outstretched. They bring their arms up, and so does Gipsy, the blow glancing off her gauntlets.

The kaiju draws back and repeats the motion, no tricky thinking involved. This time Gipsy arrests its arms with her right elbow and lands an uppercut to its side with her left arm.

The blow knocks it back into the building behind it, and in the time it takes to get back on its massive paws, Mike types in another command. Spinning saw blades on Gipsy’s left arm release and activate. At the same time, Harvey extends a hand, and Gipsy’s right arm catches a thrashing Leatherback around the throat, holding it in place against the concrete. It’s pure butchery; Mike grits his teeth at the Kaiju blue leaking out as Gipsy cuts through the beast, through hide and muscle and bone, until the thing stops thrashing.

Finally, silence.

They back off, and it falls to the ground. No pulse. Through the audio from the choppers, they hear that the seagulls are returning.

Mike whoops, and Harvey laughs.

They’ve won.

Well, they’ve won this one.

“ _Release the kraken_ ,” Harvey comments, and Mike breaks down laughing.

They sag back into the harnesses, enjoying the drift in peace for the interval it will take for the choppers to come and extract them. Harvey’s in no rush to get out of here. It’s hardly a chore, getting to hang out and mentally review the fight with Mike, who’s all flushed and bright-eyed from victory.

* * *

He’s returning to his quarters, still buzzing from the adrenaline, when he’s nearly bowled over by a running Benjamin.

“Sorry, sorry,” Benjamin yells distractedly, putting his hands on Mike’s shoulders to steady him, clearly preparing to take off again. Mike grabs him by the elbow before he can.

“Whoa, there. Where’s the fire?” he asks. Benjamin slumps.

“I fucked up,” he says miserably. “I fucked up so bad, but Pentecost needs to know about it right away.”

Mike looks him over. Benjamin’s drenched and his glasses are askew and his eyes look pretty much exactly like they did right after he drifted with the kaiju.

“Okay, come on,” he says and turns Benjamin around, because Pentecost’s likely going to be in the dining hall or his private rooms, not the control room.

The rooms are closest, and Pentecost answers their knock. He takes one look at them and waves them in. Mike’s never been in here before -- it’s like the captain’s cabin on a ship, he has a _living room_. With medals lining an entire shelf as if to illustrate why he’s earned this, although Mike suspects Pentecost would’ve been just fine in the standard-sized quarters and probably only keeps these for the multi-video conferencing apparatus set up in the corner.

Benjamin doesn’t even move to sit down, just stands inside the door and blurts, “They know we know about them.”

“What?” Pentecost asks in confusion, turning.

“The kaiju brain I drifted with, it was still transmitting. Remember when I said the brains are all connected, that it’s like a hive mind? Well, it’s a hive mind even when the brains are damaged. It knows what I...we know, and so all the kaiju know. Those kaiju were specifically designed to target the weaknesses in the Jaegers I knew about.”

It’s like another callback to the last time Benjamin had insights into the other dimension -- Pentecost and Mike can only stare at him.

“That’s how they knew,” Benjamin continues. “The EMP, the acid, they sent kaiju specifically to take Crimson and Cherno out. And Striker, but Gipsy got there before they could.”

Jesus fuck.

“How’d you figure this out?” Pentecost says, almost distractedly as he thinks over the implications.

“Hannibal Chau.”

“You went back to Hannibal Chau?”

“He’s dead now, the kaiju fetus ate him before it died. Does it matter?”

“No, I guess it doesn’t,” Pentecost sighs. “What are the odds that the Masters haven’t checked the brains, that the kaiju know, but they don’t?”

Benjamin gives him an incredulous look. “Not great, sir.”

Pentecost nods. “Most likely it won’t change the timeline, just make them better prepared.”

Benjamin nods in return, then swallows. “There’s something else, too. There’s a reason they all surfaced so close to us. They’re tracking me. The drift goes both ways.”

“Wait a minute,” Mike says, as Pentecost starts to pace again. “Where were you during the attack?”

“Tull street in the bone slums, in this shelter by the towers. The kaiju stopped right above and broke into it, looking for me. Its tongue was everywhere, man.”

“It was after _you_ ,” Mike says wonderingly.

“Enough,” Pentecost says. “This still changes nothing. All it tells us is we’re going to draw all the fire, which is good. Nowhere else can handle them. Go, inform the others,” he says, already setting up a call. “While you’re there, reset the clock. No time to grieve.”

“Kaiju fetus?” Mike asks Benjamin as they leave.

Benjamin shakes his head. “ _Long_ story.”


	13. Chapter 13

Mike wakes after a long, long nap. He’d fallen onto his bed after showering, once he returned from leaving Benjamin updating the control room guys in the dining hall. It’s well after nightfall.

He hasn’t seen Harvey since they got back.

They’d argued it in the drift, a little. It was still unresolved when they took the helmets off. (Mike wants to put the whole situation in terms a little more sophisticated than ‘Harvey thinking ‘ _We really should fuck’_ and Mike thinking ‘ _Yeah but I don’t know if we can handle it right now’_  but that’s really what it comes down to.)

Gipsy’s back in the hangar. It’s freezing, and as Mike walks up the scaffolding stairs, he tries to touch the chilled metal as little as possible.

When he arrives on the first landing with a workspace, he finds Harvey waiting for him, sitting next to the platform with the furnace and tools for repairs. He supposes he knew Harvey wouldn’t wait until Mike came to him.

There’s nothing to say, because everything’s already understood. Harvey’s eyes watch him cautiously from across the machinery, reflecting the glow from the furnace. Mike’s very aware of the thrum of his own heart.

Trevor.

Charles.

Mike’s parents.

Going back to being two different people again is strange.

Harvey gets to his feet, his movements slow and deliberate. Mike doesn’t move, mind racing, reason and desire battling it out. Harvey steps forward, closer, as if he’s approaching a skittish animal. Well, he’s not wrong to.

There’s so many reasons they shouldn’t. They might have another mission tomorrow, they need to be focused and rested and the sooner he has Gipsy back in working condition, the better, Mike knows. If this doesn’t work out, it’ll jeopardize their ability to co-pilot, and they don’t exactly have alternative drift partners. If one of them dies, as is still highly likely, it’ll devastate the one left behind. There’ll be no coming back from this.

But it all stops mattering once Harvey’s lips are on his, pressing lightly. Honestly, Mike knew this might happen the moment he decided to come here. More honestly, he’s open to being persuaded. He feels Harvey exhale, and wrap an arm around Mike’s waist when he gives in and chuckles into Harvey’s mouth. That wasn’t even close to a debate.

Their bedrooms are at least a two-minute walk from here, but Harvey seems content to take it slow. His warm hands, one on Mike’s jaw, the other on his waist, hold him in place and send butterfly-wing pleasure through his nerves. It makes his hips move against Harvey’s, and makes them both moan.

Now that he’s on board, though, Mike would really rather do it right -- workshop sex is great, but often messier than the usual kind and too quick.

“Let’s do this somewhere there’s a bed,” he murmurs against Harvey’s mouth, and Harvey grunts, reluctant to stop. Mike breaks away and raises his eyebrows.

“Fine,” Harvey says, eyes fixed on Mike’s mouth.

Mike takes him by the hand, fingers entwining, and pulls him along, laughing and ducking away when Harvey tries to kiss him and walk at the same time. They make the trip in silence, because talking out loud still feels a little strange. Also Harvey’s hand is really warm against his and Mike’s hyper-fixated on that point of contact as they steal through the empty corridors. Mike’s room is the closest and as soon as the door is shut behind them Harvey pulls him close again, and Mike sucks in a breath as Harvey presses them together, shoulders to thighs.

Their hands move around each other as they kiss, working to get the fabric off without getting in each other’s way, until it’s skin on skin. The long-healed scars on Harvey’s body don’t deter Mike -- he knows, he’s felt, how he got every one of them. He runs his hands down Harvey’s torso, shoulders-chest-stomach, relishing the feeling, the way Harvey’s muscles tense in anticipation, the hitch in his breath, the sound he makes. He breaks away to kiss down Mike’s neck, gently pushing, walking him backwards to the bed.

Mike sinks into the mattress, and Harvey follows him down, cups his face and kisses him, soft and slow.

There’s no neural bridge, but he still feels it all. The heat of his own mouth, the way he tastes on Harvey’s tongue, the shift of his shoulders against Harvey’s forearms.

Harvey’s so beautiful, and Mike wants to explore every inch of his body, even if it’s a little difficult at the moment considering how strongly Harvey has him pinned. He gets one hand in his hair as Harvey kisses him and kisses him, just brief, devastating presses of his lips against Mike’s, again and again until Mike swears his brain goes hazy and he’s matching Harvey just out of animal reflex, moaning deep in his throat. He manages to get his other arm around Harvey’s broad shoulders and then he doesn’t know what he wants to do more -- hold tightly, urging Harvey on, closer, or pull at his hair and make him give Mike some wriggle room.

Harvey senses this, because of course he does, and chuckles, nuzzling Mike’s face to the side and nipping at his jaw. “Patience,” he breathes, a weird mix of sarcasm and seduction. Mike turns back to him and tries to string together enough brain power for a smart retort, but he’s easily distracted by Harvey’s tongue in his mouth. Deciding control is overrated anyway, he gives in, responding, mirroring. Harvey pulls away, eyes positively _sparkling_ , even when dark with lust. “Good boy,” he says, and Mike can only stare at his mouth, letting Harvey run his hands down from his chin, over his neck, curving around his shoulders and down to his chest, tracing the dips between his ribs.

There are sparks running down his spine. He arches under Harvey’s clever hands, breathless.

“You’re smiling,” Harvey says, teasing.

“Can’t stop,” Mike murmurs back, and then rolls so he’s on top, having successfully maneuvered his limbs to get him the perfect leverage, taking Harvey by surprise. He grins when Harvey relaxes against the hands Mike has on his chest, just resting his own on Mike’s hips and tracing his thumbs over Mike’s skin with a goofy, affectionate smile.

Mike turns his hands, stroking, and runs his knuckles down Harvey’s chest, lightly, lower, over his stomach, slowly tracing down from his navel, feeling the muscles there tense in anticipation, and then moves his hand further down. Harvey tips his head back, neck bared in an unusually vulnerable gesture, and Mike can’t help but drop a kiss right above his adam’s apple, and then lower, over his collarbone, his chest, closing his mouth around a nipple, and then following the path of his hand down with deliberate, savoring kisses. Harvey, breathing harsh and loud, starts to move to get up, but Mike slides his hands up to Harvey’s hipbones and pins him in place, dropping a lick and a kiss above each hipbone before working his way down and taking him into his mouth.

Harvey’s hips arch right off the bed, a groan rips out of his throat, and Mike smiles smugly around him even as he bobs his head, creating tight suction with his mouth. Harvey’s hand slides through Mike’s hair, caressing and then clutching tightly, and Mike groans. Harvey’s other hand comes down to cup Mike’s cheek and jaw even as his hips thrust gently, and he whispers Mike’s name. It makes Mike shiver, and he pulls off, moving back up to be level with Harvey, to kiss him.

“Say it again,” Mike says.

“Wha…?” An incoherent Harvey is a sight to behold.

Mike cradles one side of his face. “My name. Say it again.”

Harvey looks at him for a moment, gaze dancing across his face, and then he smiles. “Mike,” he says, simply.

The way he says it, the unconscious care he puts into that one syllable, not just now but every time, even in the middle of battle...Mike pins Harvey and moves against him, hot and slick with sweat, and kisses the gasp out of his mouth. He pushes against Harvey’s hips uncoordinatedly, wanting to be everywhere at once and as a result just kind of moving without a plan.

Harvey rolls him down into the sheets, and Mike goes willingly, laughing.

Harvey just gives him an indulgent look, eyes half-hooded, smug smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as Mike wraps his legs around him. He supports himself on his forearms as he ducks his head, kissing Mike lazily as they settle into this position, moans breaking off halfway as they rub slowly against each other, Mike’s fingers curling around Harvey’s wrist. Harvey nips at his lower lip and Mike makes a soft, desperate noise against him, sliding his hand up to Harvey’s warm, warm back and clutching.

Harvey breaks away before they come just from this and reaches for the condoms, but Mike grabs his wrist.

“It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” Harvey asks him.

Mike grins up at him. “I’ve been inside your head. I trust you.”

Harvey looks torn between affection and wanting to make a joke about _being inside things_ so Mike just pulls him down again. Harvey laughs. “We do need the lube, though.”

“Ugh, fine,” Mike says, letting go and dropping his head back to the pillow and Harvey chuckles as he rummages in Mike’s bedside drawer. Once he finds it he gently disengages Mike’s legs from around his hips and Mike shifts back, swallowing, giving him room to work.

He feels one slick finger, then two. Harvey’s moving slowly and gently, but it’s been so long. Mike lets the buzz wash over him, breathing deep.

“Okay?” Harvey asks, eyes searching his when Mike opens his own halfway.

“Yeah, just…” Mike shifts, and Harvey gets the hint, works his fingers, and...there. Mike moans. Harvey bites gently at his neck as he adds a third.

“Okay, enough,” Mike husks after a moment, shuddering all over, his knees going so weak he can’t even hold his legs up anymore. He pulls Harvey’s hand away and tugs it up, adjusting, and Harvey understands, wrapping his arms around Mike and pushing in instead, already slick.

Mike bites his lip at the slight burn, but Harvey rubs a thumb soothingly over his hipbone and moves slowly until it fades, and then adjusts until he finds the right angle. Mike sighs and lets his head fall back. He’s so close. Harvey’s panting against his neck, and Mike knows he isn’t going to last much longer, either.

He nips at the skin on Harvey’s shoulder and then arches, chasing the river of pleasure running through his body.

Harvey has one hand in his hair, the other arm wrapped around Mike’s shoulders, and his thrusts bring his abs in contact with Mike’s cock again and again, the pre-come slicking both their skin.

It feels so fucking good but he’s right at the precipice. “Harvey,” Mike whines, hand tangling in his hair, pulling, and Harvey takes pity on him, hand wrapping around his cock and rubbing.

Mike gasps, drawn-out, as his whole body convulses. The orgasm is a crescendo through his nerves, and he surrenders himself to it, submerging completely. When he surfaces, feeling like he just transcended time and space in Harvey’s arms, he finds Harvey collapsed on top of him, upper body as limp as Mike’s. They lie there, panting, enjoying the residual quivers while Harvey’s breath puffs against his cheek, lazy euphoria stealing through Mike’s body. Harvey eventually shifts against him, pulling out and moving slowly and groggily to get them cleaned up. Mike lets him take care of it, he wants to never move from here. He only stays awake long enough to register Harvey sliding back into bed and wrapping him up in his arms and then he’s fast asleep.

* * *

Mike wakes to a sudden rush of cold air -- Harvey tumbling out of bed, his phone ringing loudly.

Mike rolls over and watches him sleepily as Harvey mutters into the phone, pulling on his sweatpants in a hurry, already making for the door. Mike smiles as he watches him go, unconcerned about assurances. It’s one of the advantages of drift-dating.

And then Harvey comes back in and kisses him quickly before he takes off, leaving Mike laughing.


	14. Chapter 14

He has a small breakthrough with the automation process, but there’s still a way to go before he can get it functional.

“How long do you think it’ll take?” Lola asks him.

“I don’t know.” Mike shakes his head.

* * *

“Grammy, I’d like you to meet someone,” Mike says over a video call. Harvey’s unusually nervous and Mike’s delighted.

“So you’re the one who convinced my grandson to risk his life rather than stay safe on the sidelines?”

Harvey looks stricken. “I...That’s not how I…” he fumbles, the great lawyer, and Grammy chuckles.

“I’m only joking. It might be dangerous, but it’s where he belongs. I’m very glad you could make him see that.”

Mike watches Harvey’s confusion and laughs, pushing him aside, showing him how to handle his Grammy’s particular brand of messing with people.

Once Harvey gets used to it, they start ganging up on Mike, who’s forced to regretfully let “I’m calling Grammy” as a threat go after barely two weeks.

* * *

The knowledge that kaiju can _breed_ (apart from the fact that they were after him, of course) had kicked Benjamin into even higher gear, and he’d gone and drifted with the fetus’s damaged brain. He’s now on a quest to find an intact brain to get all the answers they need.

When the meeting’s called, Mike knows it must be because Benjamin’s found something else, even though he still hasn’t got access to a full brain. Once they gather, Pentecost doesn’t beat around the bush.

“We’re going for the rift. We need to drop a nuclear warhead into it. Thanks to Mr. Geiszler, we know where it will open. It won’t be when there’s a flood of smaller categories, it’ll be another multi-event of large kaiju, like that last big battle, but we’ll be ready. ”

Get in, drop it through, get out and detonate. Linear and easy, which obviously means they’re missing something.

“So we have to drop the bomb in at the same time more Leatherbacks and Otachis are coming out?” Lola asks.

“Correct,” Pentecost sighs. “We have to be by the breach, underwater. One of us will be handling the nuke. The others will need to run point, also underwater. And at least one will have to be above water, to take out any kaiju if they escape.”

Off the silence in the room, he confirms, “There’s a very good chance this is a suicide mission. But you know the alternative.”

Harvey’s leaning against the control board, arms crossed. “We’re pre-empting them,” he sums up.

“Exactly.”

“When will this happen?”

“Six months.”

 

They all leave to their respective assignments, still silent. Mike’s already figuring out how to optimize the Jaegers for underwater fighting. They can take enormous amounts of pressure, but that far down is not a common experience for them.

Crimson Typhoon’s been remodeled to the standard two-pilot cockpit -- it wasn’t hard, the only thing that was really damaged was the conn-pod -- but they’re short of pilots. It’s a long-running problem, one that Mike finally solves when he successfully automates it.

Well, partly. His AI mechs work well enough for the lesser category monsters. They don’t for anything above a Category 2, but he keeps at it while Harvey and Jessica and Pentecost do their politicking on getting more pilots and resources, the latter of which which are again at a crunch now that they’re finally deploying more Jaegers.

Pentecost’s more than okay with the drones now. _If that’s what it takes to win this war of attrition._ Mike’s glad he doesn’t have to work on any of their side of the equation -- the stupidity of it all and their helplessness in the face of it hampers his ability to even function if he thinks about it too much.

Still, like everyone else he does have a stake in knowing how successful their efforts are, especially since the supplies of uranium and titanium and iron and every other raw material he needs are dependent on them. Pentecost’s sent out word for assistance, putting a PR team of cadets on uploading appeals and footage from the fights on social media and letting populations pressure their governments instead of trying to convince them himself. Jaeger programs are being reinstated slowly, but they need quick turnover, much quicker than looks likely.

Before, it had been obvious the rift was closer to Asia than to North America, with two to one odds of attacks. Now, with attacks centering on Hong Kong all the time, it makes more sense to try and send the Hong Kong Shatterdome whatever it needs. The only full Jaeger with a team they get is Canada’s Chrome Brutus, piloted by Inuit cousins Ilisapie Flint and Zeke Amarok, but even just that much is a huge help.

The US, meanwhile, is still making noises about the wall being the best option ‘at this time’ and about faith and the will of God. (Mike and Harvey roll their eyes and quote Hitchhiker’s at the same time: _Who is this God person, anyway?_ )

The attacks don’t stop or slow, but between Benjamin and Gottlieb, they’ve got calculations down to the second, and they make sense now, in a way they didn’t before. They’re walking a razor thin line with every attack, but so far they’re winning.

Mike and Harvey go into battle frequently, because the kaiju seem to struggle with them just a little more, just enough to give them an advantage, because they’re the most unpredictable team. (Harvey refers to their fighting style as ‘adaptable’, Mike likes to call it ‘confusion-fu’.)

They keep up their training sessions, too, partly because it’s good practice, partly because it’s just fun, Mike anticipating every trick Harvey’s got and coming up with several of his own, much to Harvey’s delight. He’s got Harvey pinned perfectly, in so many ways.

 

Two months before D-Day, Pentecost summons Harvey to the landing pad.

“Are we taking a trip, Marshal?”

“No,” Pentecost replies. “I just thought you’d want to be part of the welcoming party.” He nods over Harvey’s shoulder.

“What…?”

He turns to look. A smile breaks out across his face.

Jessica’s stepping onto the landing pad out of a jet, her hair blowing in the wind.

Harvey can feel himself smiling like an idiot for the entire walk until they’re in range of each other, and then he shakes his head and hugs her.

“Were you even authorized?” he asks, when he breaks away, ignoring the amused look she and Pentecost are giving each other.

“No,” she replies. “But I don’t care.”

“How come you haven’t run for president yet?” Harvey asks her.

“All in due time,” she grins.

 

It’s nice not to have to coordinate across time zones anymore -- or not as much, considering their procurement team is still spread across the world. Still, it frees up some of his time, which brings into contrast how much free time Mike _doesn’t_ have, between missions and repairs and handling the drones and designing new ones.

Harvey’s always prided himself on his endurance and ability to multitask, but Mike is on such a different level it’s past impressive and would probably be worrying if he didn’t also seem to know when to take a break. Actually, sometimes he doesn’t, and those times Harvey pulls him away by the arm and makes sure he gets some sleep, Mike grumbling incoherently as he drifts away.

But other times he curls up with a book and a blanket and music. He doesn’t seem to mind Harvey joining him though, just accepting him as part of the sensory solitude his mind clearly needs. He likes to run his fingers through Harvey’s hair as he reads. Still, Harvey figures it’s his job to make sure Mike doesn’t burn himself out, and he knows Mike’s amused at that when he feels it through the drift. Mike is convinced he’s invincible and doesn’t need it, but he allows it.

 

Harvey leans with his back to the bar, one evening when he’s dragged Mike out for a break from the Shatterdome.

Mike’s sitting on the bar stool next to where he’s standing, all soft and pliant from the scotch and the relaxed atmosphere and the scent of lemongrass. He puts his head on Harvey’s shoulder, the music washing over them, and finally admits, “I’m tired.”

Harvey kisses his temple. “I know.”

“How do you know?” Mike asks, burrowing closer and Harvey puts an arm around him.

“You keep falling asleep halfway through sex.”

“Mm, how do you know that’s not just because you’re bad at it?”

“You really want me to start quoting your thoughts?”

“No. Good point,” Mike says, his eyes drifting shut.

 

When Mike wakes, he has only the haziest memories of how they got from the bar to here. He picks up his phone carefully, trying not to jostle the mattress because Harvey’s asleep next to him. 8:46 AM. He should get to the hangar.

He starts to get out of bed, when Harvey’s arm wraps around his waist and pulls him back, immobilizing him against Harvey’s chest.

“Harvey…”

“No.”

“But I have to…”

“No.”

Mike laughs and stops struggling, leaning back into him.

“You're a big child, you know that?”

“Look who’s talking,” Harvey mutters, nibbling at his earlobe.

Mike tilts his head with a grin and decides he owes it to himself to actually enjoy at least some of whatever remaining time he has.

 

Rendering that bright mind temporarily insensible might just be Harvey’s favorite feeling in the world, and he doesn’t want to look too deeply into what that says about his destructive tendencies.

* * *

Mike had gone with one of the generals, Cahill, on a uranium procurement mission and had luckily been on the way back when an alert had sounded again. Another unpredicted attack by smaller category kaiju, but in an unusually large number -- it’s all hands on deck.

“So glad you could join us,” Harvey says lightly as Mike straps in next to him, and Mike can tell he’s covering relief with sarcasm.

“Worried I’d leave you alone, sweetheart?” Mike says as he does a systems-check.

“ _I promise you this is not the moment to be a wiseass_ ,” Harvey growls.

“Alright, alright,” Mike says, then pauses. “Wait a minute, did you...did you just quote _Power Rangers?_ ”

“Seemed appropriate.”

Mike shakes his head as they go into battle -- where they absolutely dominate like they always do. There’s a dual sword thing Mike’s installed that Harvey _really_ loves. (He does not love Mike humming the Transformers theme song in his head and somehow mentally makes him shut up, Mike still has no idea how.)

 

For all the thrill of the fight, Mike likes getting to sit back and just analyze, too. Harvey’s taken to joining him when he isn’t busy with Jessica and the supply chain, and he has a good eye.

None of which applies to this, right now, but Mike had wanted to just watch the action because it was in sight range of the Shatterdome and he’d never watched a fight from anywhere outside the control room before. Harvey had come along, too, because for all his airs he tends to be clingy in a _I’m-not-actually-clingy-I-just-want-to-casually-be-in-your-space-at-all-times-while-pretending-it’s-just-coincidence_ way. He’s like a cat, and Mike loves it.

They’re leaning on the railing at the edge of the landing strip, the rain no deterrent to this, when they can watch like spectators while Tacit brings fire and fury down on a monster. Between the rain and the floodlights and the jets it feels a lot like it did when Mike came to tell Harvey he was in, a year ago on the other side of the world -- but with the added soundtrack of kaiju screams. The building-sized splash of water when the kaiju falls dead lights up from the burning city behind it, looking just for a moment like one of those musical fountain shows.

Harvey breaks into cheers next to him, and for this one moment, Mike is completely happy.

Tacit’s close enough that Lola and Rachel could probably just walk the Jaeger back here, but the kaiju managed to get some good hits in and there’s crumpled metal and a hole in the conn-pod, so they’ll take the choppers instead.

“Remember to power it down, guys,” Mike says over the walkie-talkie.

“We’ve got it,” Rachel says over Lola’s amused, “Yes, _mom,_ ” and Mike listens to the AI go from “Bi-directional circuits are open,” to “Cooling process, complete,” before the choppers get to them and they leave the conn-pod.

Mike turns the walkie-talkie off and lets his arm dangle over the railing again, turning to smile at Harvey. Harvey’s already looking at him, expression fond.

“What,” Mike says.

Harvey shakes his head. “I’m just really glad I found you.”

Mike knows this -- he does read Harvey’s mind on a regular basis, after all -- but he still feels a pleased heat rise to his cheeks. He only elbows Harvey in return, however, saying, “You too, big guy,” and Harvey laughs.

The first chopper is already approaching, and they turn around to watch it land. Rachel and Lola clamber out, covered in dust but grinning.

Rachel’s always bouncy and huggy after a fight and while Lola’s occupied with giving directions to the other choppers’ pilots over the radio, Rachel bounds up to them and hugs Mike. (She’d tried hugging Harvey exactly once and he’d been so awkward about it it had brought her right down from her high. She’s left him alone since). Mike laughs and tries to contain her, because she’s also jumping a little.

“How was it?” she asks when she finally breaks away, eyes sparkling.

“You kicked ass,” Mike tells her and she beams, then looks at Harvey more hesitantly.

“It was well-fought,” Harvey says with a little smile, and she smiles back.

“Specter, Ross,” Lola nods as she walks by, and Rachel rushes to catch up to her.

“Do you think she remembers anything she does right after a fight or is it just like being drunk?” Harvey wonders.

“No idea,” Mike replies. Then he smirks at Harvey. “You don’t get to talk. You’re horny as hell after a fight.”

Harvey fails to look ashamed. “I haven’t heard you complaining.”

“This is true.” He wouldn’t complain about that in a million years.


	15. Chapter 15

He supposes it was inevitable their flawless no-injury streak would end. It’s the fact that it happens with a _Category 2_ that’s grating.

It’s not bad luck, though. It’s that they lost the Gomez brothers a week ago and between that and the increased attacks, the strain and fatigue is getting to all the remaining pilots. So it’s not bad luck, it’s that Mike loses focus for just one second, and the sea looks just a little too much like it did on the day Harvey and Charles fought Knifehead, and Harvey starts to chase the RABIT.

“Harvey, no!” Mike yells, trying to reach out to him, but it’s too late.

**

“Do you think he knew?”

They rarely talk about it. He knows what Mike’s going to say, but today he needs to hear it.

_Did he know how sorry I will always be? That I would’ve given everything to keep him safe?_

“Yes. He wanted you to be okay. You know this,” Mike adds, with a smile.

**

When he resurfaces with Mike’s help, they’ve been off-balance for long enough that when the monster lunges with all its weight at them, they crash into a row of concrete buildings on their left, on Mike’s side, and Mike wasn’t ready to brace himself or stop it. The metal of the hull folds above them, chunks on Mike’s side ripping away, a shower of debris from their own machine hitting him as it falls.

Mike collapses, and Harvey’s heart stops for a second. The abrupt disconnect in the drift sends shockwaves through his nerves, painful and familiar, and he cries out.

Pure panic propels him. He doesn’t even know if the monster is actually aiming for Mike. He doesn’t know how long he has before the neural interface overwhelms him, and he doesn’t want to imagine what it’ll do to Mike’s unconscious brain.

He wildly deploys the swords, the missiles and the bunker busters all at the same time. It means more destruction than necessary for the already beleagured Hong Kong skyline, but just at this moment, Harvey doesn’t care. Even still, it takes another hit from Gipsy’s plasma cannons before the thing goes down. As it does, inert, he registers Mike’s consciousness again, and nearly collapses with relief.

He puts Gipsy on standby, unbuckles, and hurriedly makes his way over to Mike. A chunk of the armor above Mike’s arm has been ripped off, blood underneath, and he looks dazed, eyes fluttering. He pulls Mike’s helmet off gently, and Mike unsteadily blinks his eyes open, his normally clear and sharp gaze hazy and unfocused.

“Mike,” Harvey says. His voice hardly sounds like his own.

Mike coughs as Harvey cradles his face, and Harvey unbuckles him and catches him when he falls forward. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Harvey murmurs soothingly, not sure who he’s reassuring.

He carefully lowers them to the floor, and breathes a sigh of relief as Mike puts a hand out on the metal and one on Harvey’s shoulder, trying to stay upright. “Shh, it’s okay,” Harvey says, trying to coax him into lying down, but his love is nothing if not stubborn.

Mike coughs again, then raises a hand to wipe at his mouth, clearly forgetting it’s covered in a gauntlet. He winces away from the cold metal. Harvey grabs his wrist and locks his other arm around him. “Just hold still until the choppers get here,” he tells him.

“I’m... _ow_. I’m fine, old man,” Mike grunts.

“Yeah, yeah,” Harvey humors him.

“I am!”

“I know.”

Mike looks like he wants to keep arguing, but then seems to understand the futility of it. That, or he’s just drained. Either way, he sighs in defeat and slumps into Harvey.

“Good boy,” Harvey says, and Mike chuffs a small laugh.

 

The medics had cleared him in terms of major internal damages -- the reinforced polycarbonate on the inside of the suit had protected him. He’d even avoided a concussion, although narrowly. As for the surface wound, Mike had wanted to just rinse it out, slap a bandage on it and get back to work because he was feeling extra vengeful. Harvey had grabbed him by the uninjured arm and turned him back around to the infirmary, Mike sighing impatiently.

Apparently his boyfriend is a mother hen. He won’t let Mike out of this room, insisting on fixing him up so strongly that Mike has to sit back down on the gurney and let Harvey do whatever it is he wants until he’s satisfied himself.

His fingers are gentle, even as the disinfectant leaves behind a thousand tiny licks of pain, and Mike can’t help the hiss that escapes from behind his clenched teeth. Harvey makes a sympathetic noise and Mike shakes his head.

“I’m fine...fuck!”

“Easy, tiger,” Harvey says, thumb moving over the uninjured skin on the underside of his arm soothingly. He gets to bandaging, and it’s admittedly much better than Mike could have done himself. “You’ve been delegating much better, you know. They can take care of it without you once in a while.”

Mike snorts softly, testing out his range of movement when Harvey’s done, unhappy at the bulk.

“Come on babe, it’ll be alright,” Harvey teases.

“It’s going to slow me down,” Mike grumbles.

“Cry me a river. Come on,” he says again, tugging him upright. “You should sleep this off.”

 

Mike’s cranky and intractable all the way to his room, until they’re actually in the familiar surroundings Harvey knows he associates with comfort, at which point the fight goes out of him and he lets Harvey help him change into clean clothing and falls onto the bed while Harvey changes himself. When Harvey’s done Mike reaches over and plucks at Harvey’s clothes and Harvey laughs, nudging him over and grabbing a pillow for himself, lying down next to him. Mike makes a contented noise, adjusting until he’s comfortable, his hair soft against Harvey’s shoulder. Harvey curls around him and Mike smiles, runs his fingers lightly against Harvey’s arm, warmth and safety, all here in one body, one mind, for Harvey to hug close. He falls asleep with his nose tucked against Harvey’s throat.

Harvey closes his eyes. He can feel their pulses, and he can’t tell them apart as he drifts into sleep, where he dreams, of his childhood, of whimsical or bizarre things, of flying. Despite the constant battles, he’s actually more well-rested than he’s been in years.

* * *

D-Day. They’ve lost all their teams except Lola and Rachel, Mike and Harvey, and Tanner and Kyle. And Kyle’s injured and can’t go. They’ve got a squadron of drone Jaegers that are now capable of taking down up to Category 4s, but that’s not what they’re expecting to deal with here. They’re looking at two Category 5s, and possibly the first Category 6.

Still, “Do not go gentle…”

Pentecost is stepping in for Kyle, because apparently he’s so good that he can establish drift-compatibility with anyone. (They all go silent when they see him in the armor, but all he says is a modest, “Don’t remember it being so tight.”)

The plan is that Striker will carry the bomb to the Breach, Gipsy will run point, and Tacit and the drones will stay on the coastline, ready to take down any kaiju that might escape. No one needs reminding that if this fails, they’ll all be extinct in 24 hours.

In the vast hangar, to a gathering of everyone in the Shatterdome, Pentecost gives a really epic speech about canceling the apocalypse that gets everyone fired up and cheering.

Amongst the applause, the pilots go to suit up. They’ve prepared for this, ready to dance the dance.

Kyle is waiting for them by the elevators to the conn-pods, holding Tanner’s dog, Max, on a leash. They have the strange experience of watching Tanner crouch down and speak affectionately to the dog, but it’s weirdly sweet rather than creepy.

In the elevator, Tanner turns to Rachel. “If I don’t make it and you do, will you take care of him?” he asks her.

Rachel gives him a startled look. “Uh, sure,” she says. When they reach the platforms, she hangs back, between Lola and Mike, and mutters, “Why did he ask me?”

“It’s what you get for being all friendly after fights,” Lola tells her.

“It’s not me, it’s the adrenaline, he should know that,” Rachel grumbles and Lola and Mike laugh.

 

Of course Jessica wouldn’t wait by the elevators like a pleb. She’s standing at the central hub the platforms radiate from, between the one going to Gipsy’s conn-pod and the one to Striker’s. Harvey leaves Mike and Pentecost talking last-minute strategy and walks up to her. She unfolds her arms and puts her hands on his shoulders, inspecting him.

“Adequate?” Harvey says.

“Adequate,” Jessica says with a smile, and then, to his surprise, she cradles his face. “I’m proud of you, Harvey,” she says, without any of the sarcasm or sardonicism or flippancy that characterizes just about everything they say to each other. Harvey swallows past a sudden lump in his throat and nods, and she tilts his head forward to kiss his forehead.

“You didn’t leave a lipstick smear did you, I don’t want to look stupid when I die,” Harvey says, embarrassed at how thick his voice sounds, and she laughs, letting go and chucking him under the chin so that he holds his head high.

“You clearly know nothing about lip liner,” is all she says.

“Unfortunately.”

 

“Gipsy, Striker, on deck,” Pentecost calls, when they’re done finalizing the strategy, and he and Tanner head for their platform while Harvey and Mike head to theirs. Mike sees Pentecost stop to talk to Jessica, and it makes him smile. He looks away, at Harvey instead, at the warmth in his eyes when he looks back at Mike.

Yeah. They’re going to cancel the apocalypse.

He breathes in deep and closes his eyes once they’re rigged up, as the clamps release and the conn-pod drops, attaching to the Jaeger’s shoulders.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has the 'creator chose not to use archive warnings' label for a reason. There's a content warning for this chapter that's also a complete spoiler, if you want it it's in the end-of-chapter notes.

“All ports sealed, ready to submerge,” Pentecost says, and Harvey echoes the same status back.

They’re far out over the ocean. The choppers disengage and they drop -- descending thousands of feet through the water with no problem. When they hit the shelf and the radar goes crazy, confirming the signals from the breach and they see a glow below, they know Benjamin’s intel was correct.

Tanner and Pentecost have the warhead, firmly strapped to the back of their Jaeger. “Striker Eureka taking point,” Tanner says as they start to move forward, moving smoothly through the currents.

“The first kaiju are already out, guys,” Choi tells them. “Dilation recorded both as Category 5s -- codenames Raiju and Scunner. Watch out.”

“Roger that,” Pentecost replies.

“They’re moving fast...Gipsy, on your three!”

Harvey and Mike look to their right, but there’s nothing. “We’re not picking up anything,” Harvey replies.

“It’s swimming away, coming in at your twelve.”

They look back to the front, but there’s still nothing.

“We’ll deal with it when it comes,” Tanner’s voice says over the comm. “Eyes on the prize, Gipsy!”

He’s right. They return to spotting for Striker while Choi mutters distractedly about the readings.

There’s two minutes of eerie calm before there’s finally a disruption, but it’s not from the kaiju. It’s some kind of commotion in the control room.

“What --”

Choi goes off mic. There’s an indistinct argument and then Benjamin and Gottlieb’s voices are coming down the line, which is confusing because last Mike heard they were still investigating the last kaiju corpse. Benjamin sounds shaken, but there’s a determined steel under the tremble of his voice.

“Rangers, Hermann and I drifted with an intact brain --”

Harvey freezes, frowning.

“You _what_?” Pentecost demands.

Mike holds back a quip about Benjamin and Gottlieb being drift compatible.

“Sir, please, just listen to him,” Gottlieb says. Hermann Gottlieb actually arguing that Benjamin be listened to is so weird (and actual proof that they did, in fact, drift) that even Pentecost goes silent.

“The breach is ID-enabled, of sorts -- it will only let objects pass if it detects kaiju DNA in them. You can’t just drop the bomb into the breach, you need to send it down there somehow wrapped in a kaiju carcass. Otherwise it’s just going to deflect and explode here on the ocean floor, and the mission will fail.”

The Jaegers stop, evaluating.

And the kaiju choose that moment to emerge roaring from the darkness.

One tackles Gipsy, the other Striker. Mike and Harvey grunt as Gipsy hits the ocean floor, but Harvey gets Gipsy’s right hand on and around the kaiju’s tongue and lower jaw and it thrashes, trying to get free.

Between Choi’s frantic voice and what they’re seeing through their own Jaegar’s eyes, they figure out two things: First, the one they’re grappling with is Scunner, and as Harvey thinks frantically and through impression, Mike pulls up a mental image and overlays the designs and confirms -- Scunner’s a bigger, stronger, more dangerous version of Knifehead. It likely shares Knifehead’s memories and has it in for them. Two, the kaiju are all equipped with EMP charge generators this time. The Jaegers are ready for this and unaffected, but the constant discharges are what’s confusing control.

“Plan stays the same. We’ll just have to kill one of them and send the bomb with it,” Pentecost grunts as he and Tanner grapple with the other one, Raiju.

Mike and Harvey reply in affirmation as they punch the kaiju off them, getting up and hitting it with plasma cannons. It looks like Striker has Raiju -- which looks like a mess of scaly plates from here, although they’ve got Tanner cursing about how it has a face within a face over the comms -- under control too, when Choi says, “Guys, I’ve got a third signature emerging from the breach.”

Mike and Harvey freeze; then, arm still pinning Scunner by the throat, edge around until they’re facing the portal.

Even through the water, they hear the screech. It undulates out of the breach: an eldritch abomination with a lizardlike face, a ten-foot tail split into three prehensile sections, and a massive trunk that seems equipped with every feature every kaiju has ever had.

“Fuck,” Harvey whispers, as they stare at it hover above them.

“Category 6. Codename Slattern,” Choi says, sounding shaken.

It stares back at them while Gipsy’s hands hold Scunner down, and then it turns and makes for Striker Eureka.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Mike mutters as they turn back to Scunner. They can’t hold it down and kill it at the same time, so they let it go and deploy the sword, both their right arms rotating in time, Gipsy’s right arm responding and shaking out the loose metal links until they’re fully extended and locked tight and solidified.

But instead of attacking them, Scunner also hisses and turns away, following Slattern. Mike almost wants to pick up a boulder and throw it, but decides Harvey’s idea to chase it is better.

They charge after it before it gets very far, Harvey punching buttons until Gipsy’s right hand turns into a rotating plasma cannon gun. The recoil jerks them back a little even as they push forward. The plasma blasts don’t pierce the kaiju’s thick skin, but they clearly hurt. It shrieks, bubbles rising like a geyser, and (thank god) stops, turning back to them.

It crashes into them with a snarl, but they catch its arm, grappling with it, trying to impale it with the sword but it’s dodging easily, effortlessly, much more agile underwater than kaiju ever are on land. They hear Slattern’s unearthly roar, clearly a summons because Scunner starts trying to break away again, and Mike manages to slice off its EMP generators in the confusion.

“Reading Scunner!” Choi says.

“For what good it’ll do,” Mike grunts, as it breaks their hold and swims away into the darkness. Pentecost and Tanner are still holding their own against both Raiju and Slattern, it sounds like, but they’re pretty sure even they couldn’t handle three. Gipsy’s agility is nothing down here, compared to the reptilian monsters. Lola and Rachel are demanding to come down to help, but Pentecost shouts at them to stay put. If any of these escapes -- if, god forbid, Slattern escapes, to the surface, it’s going to take Tacit and all the drones to even have a chance of putting it down.

“All three are converging on Striker -- get there quick, Gipsy!” Choi says.

Mike and Harvey don’t even bother replying, racing with everything they’ve got.

“Okay, getting close, getting close,” Choi says. “And...wait, Scunner’s turning around again.”

An idea flits through Harvey’s mind and Mike immediately nods. “Tendo,” Harvey tells Choi. “Keep tracking it. We’re stopping. Tell us where it’s coming from.”

“Okay,” Choi says, sounding unsure.

They hold still, sword at the ready. This is risky, but if it works, they’ll have Scunner dead in a minute. Harvey sets off the foghorn and they hear an angry shriek in the distance, so immediate it’s almost Pavlovian.

“Speeding up,” Choi says and they brace. “Approaching at a diagonal, still out of range, circling...On your twelve!”

Mike takes a deep breath, in and out, as he watches it swim at them, it’s jaw open and bared teeth visible even from this distance.

They hold, hold, hold...until it hits the point in its trajectory Mike has pinpointed. They step aside and thrust the sword in front of them, at an angle. Scunner can’t stop at this momentum and the sword pierces it right through the roof of its mouth. They tilt it immediately, keeping the sword stationary while the monster moves, flaying itself open on the blade. A few seconds later, its corpse falls behind them, cut partially in half. They pull the sword out, coated in Kaiju blue even underwater, and run to Striker’s aid.

Status check tells them Striker’s lost an arm and has a mangled knee. “Hold on, we’re coming for you!” Mike yells into the comm.

“No,” Pentecost says, absolutely flat -- and he’s always impassive, but Mike has never heard him sound quite this robotic. “Stay where you are.”

“What?” Harvey demands.

“This thing can’t be killed, not by Jaeger,” Pentecost says. “We’re going to set this bomb off right here. You need to take Gipsy to the breach.”

They stop abruptly, and Harvey closes his eyes. Gipsy’s reactor. Nuclear core. They have all the constants. They can do the math.

Pentecost’s voice is grim as he underlines the point: “We can’t let this one up there.”

Harvey nods when Mike looks to him.

“It’s been good fighting with you, Rangers,” Pentecost says, when they say nothing.

“We’ll see you on the other side, sir,” Harvey replies.

“Maybe we won’t,” Mike says softly.

Harvey falls silent as he catches on to Mike’s thoughts.

“What was that?” Pentecost’s voice is a sharp crackle down the line.

“I’ve been working on automating Striker Eureka,” Mike radios back, looking away from Harvey.

“No,” Pentecost replies immediately.

Mike shakes his head, even though obviously Pentecost can’t see him, taking a breath. “It just has to press a button, sir. We’ve seen the drones capable of more than that in battle.”

“Why the hell didn’t you automate your own?” Pentecost snaps, and that’s how Mike knows he’s already grieving.

“It doesn’t matter,” Mike says, although Harvey’s looking at him in understanding. Mike hadn’t wanted to mess with their interface. “A drone can’t do what we need to.”

“You have no guarantee it’ll work,” Pentecost says, but there’s none of his usual command behind it, voice subdued. He’s a veteran, he understands sacrifices for the sake of practicality in war. He knows this is how the chips have fallen, but he’s obviously unhappy about it.

“It will work,” Lola’s voice comes down over the channel, miserably.

“And if it doesn’t, they’ll need more manpower up there. It’s a pretty clear choice, sir.”

“Activate it,” Pentecost says quietly.

Somewhere, a button is pushed, and they listen to the AI’s voice come over the line. _Autobot mode, active._ Mike smiles.

There’s an endless moment of silence. What can they say? Goodbye? I’m proud of you? “Godspeed,” Pentecost says harshly.

Striker ejects both its human pilots in secure capsules, and from what Choi says, the kaiju don’t even seem to notice.

Mike and Harvey turn and run. The topographical map shows a bluff behind three dots -- Slattern and Raiju have Striker Eureka cornered. They watch on the radar as it draws them further in, and move as speedily as they can in the other direction, taking cover. Gipsy can survive a nuke, but the further away, the better.

Just as they find a shelf to hide behind, they hear the beep. “Detonating,” the AI says, and the nuclear payload meant for the wormhole is detonated on the ocean floor. The boom is so loud it seems completely unmuffled by the water, and the kaiju don’t even have time to scream. Mike and Harvey plant Gipsy’s sword in the floor as an anchor, letting the shockwave pass over them.

The ocean water around them literally retreats, the force of the blast creating a temporary pocket of hard vacuum. Then it comes surging back, knocking them off their feet. They get back up, pulling the sword out of the sediment, and head back toward the breach, stopping to pick up Scunner and drag it with them by the tail.

Harvey looks how Mike feels, sweat pouring off him.

“We have the kaiju carcass,” Harvey announces, raising his head to speak into the radio. “We’re heading for the breach.”

A minute from the drop, and he feels Mike’s bone-deep exhaustion.

“Still with me?” Harvey asks.

“Yup,” Mike pants.

Harvey nods. When they hear the shriek, they’re too tired to even react to the adrenaline that kicks through them in response. Despite the nuke that just blew up right in front of it, the Category 6 lunges out of the darkness and lands in front of them, standing between them and the breach. Bleeding, weak, but alive.

Guess they don’t need Scunner’s corpse, then. They let go of its tail.

“Activate rear jets,” Harvey tells the AI, as Slattern rears, tail flicking, and springs at them.

They move as one, lunging at it as the jets blast and take it into the drop with them. At close quarters, the fire from Gipsy’s reactor and the sword in its back are enough to take it out. It manages to wrap its claws around Gipsy’s chest and squeezes, causing nominal damage, but before it can crunch anything vital, the remaining lifeblood drains out of it and it stops struggling.

The breach lets them pass and closes above them. They’re through.

* * *

Benjamin bows his head as the rest of the control room and Shatterdome, with the exception of Choi, Gottlieb and Jessica, erupt into cheers. All Jessica says is, “Stop the clock.”

* * *

Far under the earth, or maybe it’s somewhere else entirely, Gipy’s arms let go of the catatonic Slattern. It’s a long, quiet fall. There’s interdimensional space out there, and it doesn’t matter. The nuclear self-destruct is set and will blow when it’s time, unfailingly, because Mike designed it.

“This is it.”

Harvey unbuckles, and Mike mirrors him, as always. He moves, climbing against the slope, takes Mike’s hand and comes to stand in front of him, as Mike tries to extend the buckle as much as he can, trying to get it long enough that it can wrap around them both. Harvey chuckles. “It’s fine,” he says soothingly, and wraps his arms securely around Mike, stepping close. “You’ve got me.”

He bows his head to Mike’s neck, and Mike sighs, resting his temple against Harvey’s head. They breathe.

“You know,” Mike murmurs eventually, resting a hand against the back of Harvey’s head, his fingers running gently through his hair, his lips moving against Harvey’s cheek. “I’d do it all again.”

“Yeah,” Harvey smiles, his breath warm against the hollow of Mike’s throat. He thinks about the first time he saw Mike, a lanky figure with light and shadows falling across him, eyes the same color as the sky and sea. Harvey has no regrets. There is nowhere else he’d rather be. “I would, too.”

“This isn’t how I thought it would go.”

“No, but we’re saving the world as we go.”

Mike nods.

“I never wanted…” Harvey starts to add, but Mike shakes his head, cupping the back of Harvey’s head more firmly.

“I know.”

Harvey knew he did. He needed to say it anyway, and he knows Mike knows that too.

“Will the neural bridge…?”

“Yeah,” Mike says sadly.

They fall silent.

“Hey,” Mike says, after a moment.

“Hm?”

“ _I’ll never let go._ ”

The last thing he hears is Harvey’s laughter.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: The protagonists die.
> 
> If this made you too sad and you'd rather not be, I recommend just watching (or rewatching) Pacific Rim. It has a happy ending and will pick you back up.
> 
> Title from Pluto by Sleeping at Last.


End file.
